


h(a)unted

by Basic_Spirit



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Antagonist Miles Upshur, F/M, Gore, Insanity, Possession, Sad Ending, cabin in the woods, horror movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-13 19:39:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16024625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basic_Spirit/pseuds/Basic_Spirit
Summary: After getting out of Mount Massive Asylum, Waylon thinks the worst is over. He thinks, if he can escape Murkoff, he can escape anything.Murkoff isn't the one hunting for him. Someone else has a more personal vendetta. Someone a little more than human.





	1. first day

**Author's Note:**

> I really got on a horror binge over the summer and decided to compile together my own little take on if the events after Outlast took place like your classic horror movie. I would absolutely suggest putting on some spooky ambiance, definitely inspired a lot of the writing. Please enjoy. 
> 
> (Also: Happy 5 years since Outlast!)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> waylon sees a body, then waylon sees the walrider.

Waylon Park had too much of a sense of false security.

This was something he would never expect; all his life, he’d been anxious. He had good intuition but always seemed to get himself in horrible situations. Of course, his paranoia only became worse after the asylum, but he did things he thought would help. He knew Murkoff was after them; that hell company had lost probably a billion dollars after his leak, and even if he had saved those poor souls, it meant he and his family could never live the same again. They burned the house and fled almost immediately after. They canceled all the credit cards, got as much cash as they could, buried the passports, got fakes and fled past the border through the woods. Ben was ten, Theo was eight, it was hard to explain why they were doing this, but they knew their dad had been hurt bad. Immediately after, he had to get stitches in his side, and he had a terrible leg wound. He’d lost a lot of blood, but he didn’t have much time to heal. Within three days, they’d left town.

They were now in rural Saskatchewan, in the woods in the deep forest, a cheap car sitting in the gravel beside it. Isolation from town gave Waylon that feeling of security. It was unlikely Murkoff would find them here.

However, Murkoff wasn’t the only thing trying to find them.

Every now and then, they had to venture into Cypress Hills to get food, firewood, use a public computer to see how the Murkoff case was going. Immediately after they’d settled, Waylon had not been in the state to be in public, but now he needed something to make him feel human again. Their cabin was small – two bedrooms with only enough room for a bed and a dresser (the boys were sharing now), a small living space and attached kitchen. Waylon’s nightmares had become ingrained in those walls; they would be there every night, and each time he would wake up and look at that knot of wood in their bedroom that looked like a skull.

So it was his turn to go to town. They’d disguised themselves – his head was shaved, so there wasn’t much he could do, but he always wore a hat and glasses now, and was trying to grow out his beard. Ben insisted on coming with him, but he wanted them to be together. Lisa was honestly the more capable of the two, especially with the brace on his leg. They had one phone, a wire running all the way up to the cabin, and it was easier if they were all together for Waylon to reach them.

The drive down from the woods was long and Waylon tried to distract himself by playing the radio. Every station here seemed to be news or country, so he stayed on the news until they got to a topic that hit a little too close to home for him then he’d switch to country songs until they reached one that was a little too similar to Gluskin then he’d switch back.

He was still on the road down from the cottage when his a deer suddenly lunged out in front of him – he jammed on the brakes but the leaves beneath the tires carried him forward until the animal bumped into the front of the car. He wasn’t going fast enough to do any damage, but it still made his heart race in his breath become shallow. He threw the car into park, left it running and threw the door open, hopping out. The deer was wheezing on its side, bleeding from its neck. Waylon’s heart ached.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, unsure what to do with himself. He wanted to put it out of its misery, but he didn’t know how. He stepped a little closer, looking carefully at where the deer was bleeding. Its neck was soaked, but it didn’t look like trauma. It looked like… _a bite?_

Uneasily, Waylon started to back off, the forest painfully quiet except for the deer’s struggling breaths and the cooing of birds. He looked around, extremely tense, and let out a scream when he saw what looked like a corpse standing between the trees. For a moment, he couldn’t turn away – grey skin, black eyes, blood stains from near every orifice, tattered clothes, less than twenty feet from him half obscured by trees. The expression was impossible to read until black lips pulled back to reveal bloodstained teeth.

Waylon fell onto his ass, hyperventilating, the deer the least of his problems, screaming in horror. But just as suddenly as it had appeared, the figure was gone. Still hyped up on adrenaline, he didn’t have time to consider what he’d seen or why this had happened, so he leaped back in the car and drove away, tires skidding on forest rubbage.

There was deer blood on his bumper.

He wanted to turn back. He wanted to get to his house, he wanted to be comforted by his family, he wanted them to tell him it was just his imagination, a waking nightmare for half of a second. By the time he made it to a place he could turn around, he was already most of the way there, so he decided to stick it out.

On the edge of the forest, before turning onto the rural route that would take them to Cypress Hills, Waylon got out of the car and wiped the blood off with a paper towel. It smelled so strong in the air, like copper, iron, coins in your mouth, like thoughts that weren’t his. He gagged. Still paranoid, he examined the forest behind him. He shouldn’t have; he was just asking to see something. There was so much random crossing over of branches, bushes, limbs.

He got back in the car and continued to drive. In town, he felt a little better in numbers. Although he now harbored a deep mistrust for every stranger, he thrived in the domesticity of it all. Mothers running errands in the middle of the day with babies in their carts, retired folks sitting on benches. He told himself they weren’t Murkoff. This was their safe place; if anything, these people would protect him.

Most of the items on his family’s grocery list were non-perishables – canned goods that would last them a few weeks. They were eating a lot of beans, canned veggies, bread, crackers. Meat was a luxury they could only achieve the first few days after their grocery expeditions. Waylon wanted to buy his family treats, packing the goods into the trunk of their sedan and picking up a paperback book for Lisa and a newspaper.

The front page story is about a series of murders on the border.

Now, even before the events at Mount Massive, serial killers had been one of Waylon’s greatest fears. Now, it just brought him right back to a gymnasium full of bodies on the ceiling, going up to join them, god knows how many killed in a mere 12 hours. He buried the newspaper deep in one of the bags, willing his mind not to stay on that subject. He urged to get home, start a roaring fire, read a book and wrap himself in a blanket, to try to forget the two-second apparition he’d seen earlier that day.

The ride back was much less uneventful, but he couldn’t seem to get the radio to tune to any of the stations; it stayed wavering just on the wrong wavelength, just enough to get static and a couple words. He found one frequency that was pretty good, and it was less unnerving than driving in silence.

When he drove up, Lisa was waiting for him outside. Her face was so gentle, brown and freckled; being around her always had a way of suddenly putting Waylon at ease. He can almost completely forget about the events of earlier with her helping him haul the groceries in from the car. She could tell something is off, but when _wasn’t_ something off with Waylon? She tried not to show how worried she was about him.

Waylon sat in the living room later that afternoon, windows just barely cracked to let in some fresh air as Ben and Theo played some handheld game in front of him. He couldn’t get the face of that corpse out of his mind’s eye – the blackened eye sockets, the red teeth. He hadn’t seen anything like that in the asylum. Was his imagination just running away with him?

For a long time, Waylon knew he needed treatment. The nightmares were only getting worse, if there was any change. He didn’t feel like the same man he was before, and their drastic move only deepened that fact anyway. He was starting to think he should find a psychologist around town and get help.

The family played some quiet board game for the majority of the afternoon: their cabin made it feel like an endless vacation from the advances of modern society. Many times, Waylon had considered buying a cheap laptop. There was dial-up internet in the cabin, they could do it. He worried it would make them too easy to trace.

When it became dark (early, in late November) Lisa cooked them the roast that Waylon had got. The house smelled of aromatic herbs: lavender, rosemary, thyme. Potatoes boiled in a pot on the rickety gas stove. Ben was working on a model airplane and Theo was reading a book. Waylon was sitting on his bed, staring at the knots in the wood siding. They looked like ultrasounds, like babies growing in wombs in sepia brown.

His mind was on Gluskin today. _Above the knees, below the navel. Sliced and sewn on Gluskin’s table._ Words he couldn’t get out of his head, things he’d never unsee. How many nights did he dream the operation was a success, how many nights did he see his own death, bleeding out over the saw? How many times did he realize just how often luck had barely saved his life?

One thing Waylon couldn’t shake was the cold. He always seemed to be trembling, and the dwindling seasons weren’t helping that either. Even sitting on the bed in a sweater over a long-sleeved shirt, he still needed a blanket wrapped around his torso. His nose, hands, and feet hadn’t been warm since before the asylum. He became immediately doubtful, though, as a puff of breath from out of his nose was visible in the room. It shouldn’t be that cold – the space heater in the corner was turned on. The window to his left had frost around the edges: was it that cold already? When exactly did winter set in in Canada?

Suddenly, Waylon’s mind felt far from his wife and family in the other room. The corners of the walls seemed to stretch like vertigo, making the door behind him feel kilometres away. His eyes were locked on the window, puffs of breath just barely showing up in his vision. The moon was full outside, casting blue light onto the glass. Shadows moved strangely against the frost; branches twisting in the wind. Waylon shivered, trying to look away, but he couldn’t. The morphogenic engine flashed over his eyes for a fraction of a second, explaining the vertigo and bringing him back to the asylum. On the frost, a shadow became more defined and a hand suddenly appeared against the window, melting through the frost – mangled, dirty, missing the index finger.

At that same instant, Lisa was knocking on the door and the room returned to its proper dimensions. “Way, sweetie, dinner is ready.”

Although Waylon’s gaze had shifted to Lisa, it wandered back to the window where there was no handprint left; had it frozen over, or was it never there? Waylon didn’t want her to worry, so he came to dinner, leaving his comfort blanket on the bed.

Dinner, of course, was lovely. The roast was warm and filling and put some feeling back into Waylon’s body. Ben and Theo talked loudly about the results of the afternoon’s game of monopoly. Waylon hated having them out of school, but Lisa was trying her best to continue their education from home.

However, after he ate, Waylon began to feel woozy. It was like he was drunk, but there was no explanation for it – he was just dizzy and strangely weak. Although Ben and Theo continued prattling on, Lisa noticed Waylon’s sudden discomfort. She touched his arm. “Babe… are you okay?”

Waylon knew this feeling wasn’t for no reason. Behind them, he watched a distinctly human silhouette at their window. The shadow was facing them, standing, observing. Waylon shuddered, shaking his head, trying to get himself out of this stupor. “I just thought…” he trailed off as the humanistic outline returned to just the shifting tree branches in front of the window. “Sorry. I’ve been really on edge today.”

Her hand trailed down his arm to squeeze his hand. “I understand. You can tell us these things.”

Waylon didn’t believe what he was seeing. He _never_ saw things. His paranoia came mostly from people around him – he never knew what they would do next! The dreams were horrible, but they were dreams. Of course, there was fear of the unknown: dark corners could harbor almost anything. The things he’d seen today were too clear to be mistakes.

He didn’t want to tell his family he was getting worse. He wanted to be better. So, he forced a smile and told them, “don’t worry, I’ll let you know.”

He tried not to look at the windows while he brushed his teeth, tucked the boys into bed. While Lisa read them a chapter of Harry Potter, Waylon double and triple checked the locks on their door, the windows, closed the damper in the chimney, ensured the stove was turned off. Checks like these gave him control; when everything was still closed the next morning, he felt secure.

Eventually, it was time for Waylon and Lisa to get to bed as well. He closed the blinds in their room, still reassured by the red light coming from the space heater in the corner. Lisa was bundled in flannel jammies, crawling in bed and embracing him, warming him up already.

“Way, we will do everything in our power to make sure you end up okay,” she stroked his short, stubbly hair, holding his face into the crook of her neck. “I will protect you. Murkoff is not going to get us here; we picked this place because it’s so hard to get to.”

Waylon didn’t know what he thought he saw, but it wasn’t Murkoff.

He managed to get to sleep, but the nightmares were there. He’d often wake up gagging, not remembering the gist of the dream, but just being left with the lingering fear. Most of the dreams were put together with images he had seen in that place, plus some imagining of things he knew were happening but did not see. He always seemed to remember the one just before when he woke up for good, and tonight, this dream wasn’t one of the regulars.

Most nights, he dreamt of one of two things: Gluskin’s table, or Manera’s kitchen. However, this final dream was about his escape. Golden morning light, wind whipping at his face (a feeling he thought he’d never see again). The digital wraith Murkoff had summoned liquidized Blaire before his eyes: this fate was justly deserved by that corporate scumbag. In this dream, this wasn’t all the swarm did. It stopped between him and the door, staring him down, facelessly, blurrily, hurting his eyes like a dusty wind. It was blocking Waylon from freedom.

As he tried to step past it, it let out a mechanical cry and it rushed him, passing through his chest and knocking the breath out of him. He felt covered in blood. The swarm burned where it passed through him but it continued on the other side as well. He turned to watch as it gathered back into a more solid body – thicker arms and legs, not just the skeleton core. It hurt his eyes like the swarm, but he could see there was real flesh, not just nanotechnology. Where there should have been a face was just a blank plane, curved like a ram’s skull. This wasn’t a figment of his imagination; he’d seen this half-walrider being on his escape. He’d looked back, god knows why, and left that place with this demon on his tail.

But in the dream, he just stared. It seemed to take up his whole field of vision, taking his gaze with lateral non-eyes. _No mouth, but it feeds._ He could hear its metal screaming in his ears, his own heart punctuating it like a beating drum.

He was jarred awake for no reason screaming, writhing, Lisa’s hands on his arms trying to hold him down. He couldn’t stop screaming but he didn’t know why; the dream hadn’t been the same type of scary as most of his dreams were. Still, he wailed, writhing unable to still his beating heart. His ears were wet with what he would later learn to be blood. He started to get control of his lungs, trying to lose himself in Lisa’s calm face above him, her beautiful comfort and warmth, but this was far from over. Just as his cries started to die down, his eyes focused past her to the ceiling, where the walrider squatted in the darkest corner.

His screaming double back two-fold.

Just like in the dream, he couldn’t tear his eyes from the walrider, as much as it hurt his eyes. Now, the morphogenic engine overlayed on his vision, he knew this was real. His bones buzzed with energy, cells being stimulated in his bone marrow that hadn’t been stimulated in months. Suddenly, all he could hear was whirring, like a distant helicopter, tickling his brain, making it itch. Lisa was still looking him in the eye, soundlessly yelling, panic clear on her face. Time seemed to slow as the swarm peeled back in layers: muscle, then bone, then spirit, then nothing, descending into the ceiling, eyes still white and still locked on Waylon.

As time slowed, he fell into a seizure. He didn’t know that’s what it was, but later he would realize. His muscles contracted, exerting at maximum force, head tilting, eyes rolling back, limbs writhing. Lisa tried her best to hold him in place, to keep him on the sofa bed. She was trained in first aid, but she’d never had to do anything like this before, and she didn’t think it would have to be to her husband.

The boys were trying to force the door open to see what was happening but Lisa had one foot pressed back against it, holding it shut. “Benjamin, Theodore, get back to bed,” she yelled with a tension unlike her, trying to ease Waylon’s motions as he slowly started to withdraw from the seizure, suddenly tired and confused, lying on his back, wiping his mouth and wiping his ears, finding red. He could hear Lisa again. “Everything’s alright, I’ll be out in a second.”

Waylon was extremely drowsy, too much to think, too much to move. Lisa took all her weight to roll him onto his side, tucking one hand under his head, propping one knee on the bed so he wouldn’t fall farther. She tried her best to clean him up with tissues (why were his ears bleeding – did that mean brain damage?) then hurried out, shutting the door behind her to attend to the boys.

Both were standing just outside the door, trying to peak in to see their father’s state. “Hey,” she pulled them both into a hug. It was early, only faint light coming in the windows. “It’s alright. Dad just had a bad nightmare, he’s okay now. I don’t want you boys to worry, okay? Get back in bed, I’ll tuck you guys in.”

As she ushered them back to their room, she couldn’t help but notice a chill coming from their living room. She poked her head in and found their front door slightly cracked open, swinging on its hinges. Uneasily, she went in and shut it, fastening the lock and jiggling the knob for good measure.

She turned up the boys’ personal heater and petted their hair, trying to comfort them when she herself felt more jarred than she had in months.

She didn’t sleep anymore. All she wanted was to know what was going on in Waylon’s head. Her knowledge was sabotaging her – a medical researcher back in Colorado, her mind was already rushing to explain it. Sipping a cup of tea, she didn’t know what to do with herself. Waylon needed help, but she didn’t know how to get it for him.


	2. second day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ben and waylon search for firewood. ben and waylon get chased. waylon throws up.

Later, once the sun had risen high in the sky, Waylon woke up for real. In his bed without Lisa beside him, his muscles were so sore, his throat was raw. His episode from earlier was just a blur in his memory. He wandered out to the front room where Lisa was sitting at their wooden table.

“Leese?” Waylon asked slowly, hoarsely. “What… happened this morning?”

She bit her lips looking down. “I… don’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” Waylon felt teary. “I never wanted to scare you or the boys… I just…”

Waylon didn’t know how to iterate what had happened. Now, he found it very unlikely that the true walrider had been on their ceiling; it seemed to make sense that it had just been one lingering figment from his dream, lasting into his half-awake state. He believed that he’d just had some sort of panic attack, but god knows what had happened after. He wanted to hear it from Lisa’s point of view.

“I’ve never heard you scream like that,” Lisa hugged her knees to her chest. “And then you, like… passed out. It looked like a seizure, but I don’t know how…” Waylon rubbed his head and Lisa patted his back. “Look, I know you went through trauma, sweetie, but I’m worried it’s something more. A lot happened to you in there, you were drugged, you were in the engine, they put god knows what in your brain. Your ears were bleeding, too, I…” she set her jaw, “I’m worried there’s an underlying issue. I think you should go to the doctor.”

 

Waylon didn’t want this, but if it’s what Lisa suggested, there was a lot of merit. She didn’t even know the full extent of the previous day’s full horror. He frowned and looked down. “I’m alright. If it happens again, we’ll go to the hospital.”

 

They made breakfast for the boys, Waylon ensuring them that he was alright, he’d just had a terrible dream. The boys understood what nightmares were like. They were eager to go outside and play, dressing in their winter sweaters and boots and urging their parents to head into the forest with them.

  
Ben was always more eager. “Come on, dad, let’s go,” he grinned, unlocking and opening the door.  At first, Waylon and Lisa weren’t sure why Ben stopped, why he didn’t proceed over the threshold. Theo was hot on his heels, also coming to a stop right in the door.   
  
Waylon approached behind them, standing tall over his boys to find a dead crow on its back on their front step. The wind rustled the dead leaves around them. The three of them froze.   
  
“Hey, it’s no matter,” Lisa was beside them now, too, the most sensible of all of them. “Animals die all the time, boys. Here, I’ll clean it up.”   
  
Waylon couldn’t watch as she went to get a plastic bag for the bird. He returned to the inside of their cabin, looking out the windows at the grey and brown forest around him.   
It didn’t take long for the boys to move on. The bird was dealt with, but Waylon was still shaken up. Everything seemed to be happening very quickly, and that was what scared him most.   
  
He remained inside while the boys ran between the trees, playing a complex hide and seek tag game. Lisa was standing in the front yard, raking leaves. Waylon was trying his best to convince himself he wasn’t crazy. He was telling himself he was just paranoid, drawing patterns from nothingness – matrixing of shadows, tree limbs, random events. He was trying to keep himself calm, trying to tell himself today would be better, that some days were just worse than others. This was his own form of therapy – create rational thought patterns instead of getting hung up in negative assumptions. He would be okay.   
  
In the afternoon, Lisa worked with Theo at the table to practice the multiplication they’d been learning, and Waylon and Ben ventured out to get some more firewood. Waylon knew he should be the one to carry the ax, but Ben liked to carry it so much. Sometimes, it felt like they were the only four people in the world, walking the bent-birches forest with winter coats, boots, and wrinkled khakis.   
  
They’d adjusted quickly to forest life (not that they’d had much of a choice) and made sure to always mark their path. Ben wrapped a long red piece of yarn around the trees as they wandered out from the cabin, eager to find dead wood to fill up the reusable grocery bag Waylon had brought. They ventured out, crows cawing overhead, the sky an overcast grey. It felt like it would snow later.   
  
“Dad,” Ben ducked under the string and dropped the bundle by the tree, lifting the dead ferns in front of him and revealing a massive tree on its side, dry roots pulling up the ground at its base. “This is awesome, if we can cut it up.”   
  
Waylon set down the bag, digging out a pair of safety glasses for him and his son. “Good find, Ben. Stand back, I’m gonna start with some of the thicker branches, then we’ll see what we can do about the trunk.”   
  
It was a big old broadleaf tree, trunk about as thick as the full diameter of their arms. Waylon chopped the wood and Ben loaded it into the bag with his gloves. There were a lot of gashes already present in the side of the trunk, bark ripped up in the same direction the tree had fallen. Waylon told himself it was bears, but these gashes looked too even, too clean. It looked like an ax, if not something neater, but there wasn’t anyone else in these woods. He tried to tell himself it could have been down for months, years, someone else at it long ago. None of these suggestions seemed to convince him.   
  
There was much more wood than they could fit in their bags, so they left most of the tree there. “Let’s leave the string in place so we can find it again later,” Waylon suggested to Ben. The brown-haired boy nodded and took the bundle, tying it around the tree they’d left it at. Each of them carrying two bags, one on each arm, they started to follow the trail back to their house. It was automatic, one hand on the red, Ben looking curiously at the forest around them.   
  
It was only when they seemed to have been walking for a long time that Waylon stopped to think. “Does it feel like we’ve gone a lot farther?” he asked uncertainly.   
  
“Yeah,” Ben agreed, “but we’ve got the string. We’re okay.”   
  
Waylon was starting to worry. “Do you think we could’ve got turned around?”   
  
“Maybe,” Ben was just as unsure as his dad. “Well, we should keep going. I’m not tired.”   
  
So they continued along the wire. Waylon wore a watch, but the battery had been dead for more than a month now. They must’ve been walking for at least a half hour.   
  
“Wait—” Ben stopped suddenly, and Waylon bumped into him. “Dad…”   
  
Waylon looked in front of him and found the end of the string tied around the tree and the massive dead tree they’d cut up five feet away. He swallowed. “See, we just got turned around. It’s okay, Ben, we just need to pay more attention on the way back so it doesn’t happen again, okay?”   
  
Ben was clearly getting a little worried. “…Okay.”   
  
Now, they made sure to keep the red on their right side, one hand always touching their path. It didn’t feel like they were getting closer to home. They walked for a while more, but the sounds of the forest were getting overwhelming. Waylon’s eyes darted back and forth with the endless crunching of leaves and branches underfoot, pointy vines scraping their legs and arms. It was kind of hypnotizing, everything stretching and looking the same, time blending into one solid point.   
  
Again, Ben stopped in front of him. Waylon returned to reality, looking over his son’s head. In front of them was a solid rock wall, the edge of a cliff, and the end of the yarn tied around a tree. A terrible daunting feeling came over Waylon.   
  
“Dad,” Ben’s doubt was growing.   
  
“It’s okay,” Waylon tried to comfort his son, trying to figure out the right thing to say. “Here, let’s take a break for a second and figure this out.”   
  
Waylon’s brain felt like mush; he was starting to panic and he couldn’t focus. They sat on the cold ground and drank some water from Waylon’s bottle, sharing a granola bar and trying to figure out what their next step was.   
  
“The string probably just came untied and blew off the path,” Ben tried to reassure his clearly distressed father. “Here, you have a compass in your bag, right?”   
  
Waylon dug out the old analog device, looking at it. “Our cabin faces…” he pictured the sun rising in his window, “south west, and the tree we stopped at was pretty much right in front of it. So, if we follow the thread back to the big tree, we can just walk northeast and then we’ll be home!”   
  
Ben was unsure, but they had no better leads. “…alright.”   
  
So that meant more walking. They left the cliff and followed the thread back for another half hour. When they came to the end of the rope again, Waylon filled with dread. The tree was nowhere to be seen.   
  
When Ben noticed this, he was crushed. His face crinkled and he put his head in his hands. “Dad, I’m tired… I want to go home…”   
  
Waylon was looking at the compass in the palm of his hand, the needle spinning in circles. He grabbed Ben and held him to his chest. “HELP!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “HELP! LISA!”   
  
The two screamed for a while, crying out for their loved ones, wandering the forest as if they were blind. Waylon’s leg was getting terribly sore, Ben was cold and shaking even though Waylon had given him his scarf. Waylon was carrying Ben’s bag of wood and they’d had to leave one behind since it got too heavy, digging into their cold hands. Waylon’s bones ached.   
  
They had been calling for help for a little while when Ben trudged into a hedge and a family of small birds flew out, up into the sky, feathers shaking in the wind. This made both of them jump in surprise, but when the flock of birds cleared, Waylon’s vision shifted to something behind it.   
  
The black walrider figure from his dream was standing thirty feet away in the woods, looking at them, ram skull blocking out any features that would’ve looked human. Nanotechnology swirled, Waylon’s ears were suddenly filled with thrumming and he couldn’t look away. Could Ben see it?   
  
“Ben…” Waylon said very quietly, one hand protectively in front of his son. “Run.”   
  
“What?” Ben asked uncertainly, fear in his voice.   
  
“Ben, RUN!” Waylon repeated as the creature before them unraveled into a cloud, the swarm, and started to advance through the sky. The young boy shot off like a dart (he was in track and field in school; he was fast) and Waylon tried to keep up, but his leg was slowing him down. It felt like the asylum, limping as fast as he could.   
  
As they ran, Waylon risked a few glances back. Each time, the cloud of darkness would be on their tale. It was this terrible on and off of sound – for a few seconds, the silence of the woods, the crunch of leaves, then the unbearably loud hissing in his ears when his eyes made contact with the swarm. He was sweating, panicking, his heart was beating so fast in his chest he thought it would burst.   
  
Painfully, he tripped over a raised root, sprawling into the dead leaves, and when he lifted his head, he found himself in a clearing. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw his cabin in front of them, Lisa at the door cradling Ben in her arms and Theo peeking meekly around her.   
  
“Waylon?” she cried.   
  
“Lisa!” he yelled back, trying to get up but crying out in pain as he tried to put pressure on his injured leg. With panic, he turned to look behind him, searching for the swarm. There was a whoosh in his ears and the engine flashed for a few seconds, but by the time Lisa reached him, he was back to normal.   
  
“Baby, baby, what’s wrong,” Lisa was wiping sweat off his forehead, looking at his pinprick pupils. “Where were you guys?”   
  
“We got lost –” Ben was out of breath, panting, “the string got all messed up and we…”   
  
Waylon was crying now, tears streaming down his face, some from pain, more from panic. Lisa helped him to his feet, helping him limp inside. All of their wood had been lost, the ax, the compass, but all that didn’t matter. Things were getting scary fast.   
  
They got inside and locked the door. Waylon and Ben both sat by the fire, trying to warm themselves. Lisa was in the bathroom fetching the first aid kit and Theo was staring curiously at the two.   
  
“Why did you say to run?” Ben quietly asked his dad. Waylon didn’t know how to answer.   
  
“Look,” Lisa knelt before them, rolling up Waylon’s pant leg to reveal the brace. “From now on, we’re not going that far for firewood, okay? We’ll just take down some trees within earshot of the cabin. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you guys…”   
  
The removed the brace and Waylon winced. Although he’d only tripped fifteen minutes ago, the damage was already visible. His ankle was bruising darkly, and he knew he’d likely tore anything that had healed. The brace did a pretty good job allowing him to walk, but he wasn’t ready to run, let along wrench his ankle on a root. Lisa held an ice pack to it, her hands gingerly dancing over the wound. The scar from his stitches was still fresh, still clean. It was the internal damage that was worse.   
  
“You’ll be okay,” she hugged her two biggest boys and kissed their heads, then tussled Theo’s hair and got up. “I’m gonna make you something warm to eat, okay?”   
  
Waylon felt terrible for bringing Ben into this horror. He wasn’t alright; he was delusional. Corpses, walriders, demons… his head was fucked. He put his head in his hands and scooted closer to the fire.   
  
“Did you see something?” Ben asked.   
  
“No,” Waylon lied. “Did you?”   
  
“No, but you keep looking back, it… it looked like you were looking at something, but there was nothing there,” Ben looked down. “I dunno. You just surprised me.”   
  
“You’re fast,” Waylon nodded. “I’m glad I didn’t lose you.”   
  
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Ben whispered and hugged his dad before getting up to find himself a blanket to wrap up in.   
  
It took Waylon a few hours to warm up, but once he did, he was alright. He was worried about his deteriorating mental state, sure, but his leg was feeling better once Lisa put the brace on again.   
  
She and the boys headed out with a smaller jackknife to cut off some branches from around the clearing for kindling for the fire they’d have tonight. Waylon’s mouth was stale and his appetite was low. He went into the bathroom to brush his teeth, popping on the light absentmindedly. He gripped the sink, still feeling tired and weary from his rough morning. Gently, he splashed water on to his face, leaning down and running the tap until warm(ish) water came. Everything was very quiet in the cabin except for the water running as Waylon rubbed his eyes wetly.   
  
Very gradually, the sink began to vibrate. The glass with their toothbrushes trembled, making a quiet rocking sound. Waylon gripped the basin and stood up, looking in the mirror to find its glass tremoring too. The bathroom light flickered, then behind him was the black shadow of the walrider, hovering in the bathtub. The thrumming was back in his ears; the buzzing was back in his bones. His breath shaking, he turned around rapidly, looking behind him to the tub where he’d seen the walrider. Of course, there was nothing, only his own faint shadow nearly in the same place. He shook his head, frowning, chastising himself, turning around to look at the empty mirror again.   
  
He was surprised he was still hearing the vibration now that the sink and mirror had stopped trembling, but his blood still seemed active. Out of habit, just as a double checker, he looked behind him again, and his heart stopped.   
  
Behind him was the real walrider.   
  
It shrieked in a terrible, mechanical way, and the mirror shattered, casting ice slivers down onto the floor. Waylon was petrified, unable to move as the swarm took over his mind and the engine flashed over his eyes: shapes he couldn’t imagine, flies around wounds, bugs, kaleidoscope changing images, things that made his brain feel like it was retracting in from his skull, things permanently ingrained. The scream made his skull vibrate and his nose bleed, and then it rushed at him like in the forest, straight through his body so all his muscles burned, then up to heaven, it went away.   
  
The force of it striking his frame made his legs turn to jelly and he was on the bathroom floor like he’d just fallen unconscious. His eyes were still wide, watching where it vanished into the ceiling above him, the engine still decorating his field of vision. _You don’t have to wake up, but open your eyes._   
  
In a way he couldn’t explain, the ceiling started unraveling. It was like paint peeling – the walls around him changed and stretched and the ground beneath him didn’t feel like cold tile, it felt like scratchy wood, and all of a sudden everything was damp with terror sweat. He wasn’t in his bathroom, he was in the asylum, ancient walls around him, the smell of blood saturating every sense. He couldn’t move, his heart just sped up. His clothes turned to his rough patient jumpsuit, his leg screamed at him in pain. Cries upon cries filled his ears and he sobbed out loud, curling in on himself, seeing things he knew weren’t real.   
  
He wasn’t asleep. It was like a dream, but he wasn’t asleep. He balled his hands into fists so hard his fingernails made his palms bleed, but he didn’t wake up. He was feeling too much to be in a dream, he was too conscious. Every sense was overwhelmed: he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, he was touching things he knew weren’t possible, tasting bile, smelling blood, gagging on himself, hearing honest to god patients from outside of his ears.   
  
His consciousness expanded, like he was looking down at himself from the third person, a patient again on the filthy female ward floor, curled in the fetal position, and outward to see the violence going on in the asylum, then to the peaks of the roof, the bottoms of the basement, to the grounds around Mount Massive, to the storm clouds and the fog and the moon and the electricity in the air. His head hurt.   
  
Lisa should’ve known better than to leave Waylon inside. When she saw the bathroom light flick on and off, her suspicions were raised. She and the boys gathered what they had and rushed back in. Lisa made sure to take to lead. The light was off in the bathroom now. “Waylon?” she called hesitantly, gesturing with her hands for the boys to stay back and stay quiet. “Honey, are you alright? It’s just me, it’s just Lisa…”   
  
She could hear him whimpering and eased the bathroom door open, letting the light from the living room show her where her husband lay on the floor. His eyes were wide, gleaming in the dim light like candies. She knelt next to him, her voice rising in panic but trying to stay calm and comforting. “Way, I’m here. What happened, are you okay?”   
  
Of course, Waylon’s consciousness was still lost in this bizarre waking dream. Lisa’s hands ran over his chest, over his face, looking for damage. She was weary of the shattered glass around him, but he seemed to be alright. His hands were bloody, but that damage wasn’t serious. She eased his head into her lap, stroking over the thickest veins on his skull. “I’m here babe, come back to me.” He was breathing so fast.   
  
All of a sudden, Waylon returned. It was like surfacing from water: he gasped in air, lunging forward, crunching glass on his knees as he reached towards the open door where his boys stood afraid. Lisa’s gaze was so serious. “Benjamin, take your brother to your room. I don’t want you seeing this. Everything is going to be okay, just go to your room.”   
  
Waylon’s breaths were strangled, gulping, eyes still wide but sore from being opened for so long. He wanted to feel everything real again – cold tile beneath his thigh, Lisa’s hand in his hair, the sweet smell of woodsmoke, of mint toothpaste and cheap strawberry body wash. Every breath he took was a struggle, a shudder, his lungs heaving. His stomach felt heavy where the walrider had contacted him before, it felt full of lead. Realization of this thought made him gag, made food well up in his throat. He struggled to his knees, pushing Lisa out of the way, opening the toilet just in time for another gag. His chin hung in as he suddenly spilled his guts, black tar, black metal, coming up his throat and into the bowl with more force than he knew. Again and again, he gagged, bringing more foul smelling metal up to the world, his body trying to expel this foreign substance. He was terrified to speak, he couldn’t breathe, his nose leaked more fluid as he tried his best to spit all of it out.   
  
He nearly started to cry as he looked at the bowl full of pitch before him, knowing he’d been infected, feeling like he was right back in the asylum. He sat back on his knees and looked to his wife: “Leese…”   
  
“Honey, you’re okay,” she brushed broken glass out of the way and scooted over to rub his back. “If you have to throw up, you can.”   
  
This confused Waylon, and he looked back at the toilet to find it empty except for a bit of saliva, and more spit wetting his mouth and lips.   
  
“I’m not insane,” he cried to Lisa, mouth curving, eyebrows curling. “I swear to god I’m not insane…”   
  
And Lisa just sat there on the floor, cradling his head in her lap, the shattered mirror around them like a crystal web.


	3. third day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the power goes out. theo gets attacked. waylon takes pictures.

After breaking down in the bathroom, Waylon wasn’t well enough to be by himself. The boys sat with him in the kitchen while he sipped a mug of lukewarm water with peppermint, not well enough for tea. They hated that their father was falling apart before their eyes (still shaking, still breathing unevenly) but they knew he needed their help. Theo tried to distract him by showing him his pokemon cards, and Waylon tried to invest himself into hearing all about the different creatures, trying his best to distract himself. Lisa swept up the broken mirror and took down the empty frame, checked the bulb to see if it was loose or nearly burned out. She closed the blind on the window.   
  
Waylon wouldn’t let himself look at windows. He didn’t want to know; ignorance was bliss. All the blinds were closed.   
  
When they eventually put the boys to bed, Waylon had to sleep early too. He was exhausted, but terrified. Lisa left the light on and let the clock radio play quiet guitar music beside them. Waylon lay on the bed, arms crossed over his chest, trying to feel everything, trying to tell himself he was okay, not looking at the window, while Lisa took finished putting the boys to sleep.   
  
She wedged a chair against their front door to ensure it stayed closed all night.   
  
She came to bed and closed their own door solidly. The sheets were tucked in tightly. “How are you feeling?” she asked very gently, her voice soft and slightly rough.   
  
Waylon sat up to meet her warm brown eyes. “Better,” he lied. He reached to her and stroked a strand of wavy brown hair behind her ear. “Thank you… and I’m sorry.”   
  
“Don’t apologize,” she leaned into his touch, scooting onto the bed now. “You’re sick, Way. PTSD is a very real thing. And I know that… even if you weren’t having… _flashbacks_ or seeing things or, I don’t know…” She was trying to find a nice way to say this. “I know that things can change. Healing is a really strange path and if you think it's time to get help, we can.”   
  
“I don’t think… that’s what I want,” Waylon was still struggling to figure out what would work for him. He didn’t want to be sick. He wanted to be well. He thought if he could fake it long enough, he would start believing it, too. He was afraid to sleep. “Let’s just go to bed…”   
  
They left the light on and the heater going. Waylon forced himself to keep his eyes closed, put earplugs in so he wouldn’t panic at phantom creaks in the cabin. The clock radio was still providing pleasant white noise. Lisa’s chest was rising and falling beside him. Still, he just couldn’t sleep.   
  
Waylon fell into some sort of very light sleep at some point – he kept dipping in and out of consciousness, resting for a second and then a frightening thought would cross his mind and he’d be more awake again. Later in the night, he slept sounder, but he was jerked awake from a deep, dreamless sleep, by a loud crackling noise, then various frequencies winding down like a techno song. He opened his eyes to watch the lamp go out at his side, casting the house into darkness. He rubbed his eyes, sitting up and twisting the switch, trying to turn on the lamp again. It didn’t turn out. The clock radio was off now as well, and the space heater, and the rest of the house was dark.   
  
Was the power out?   
  
Slowly, unsurely, Waylon got to his feet. If the power really was out, they’d freeze very quickly. The house was so dark, only a tiny sliver of moonlight peeking in from between the curtains. The clock was off in the boys' room as well, and the light in the living room wouldn’t turn on. Waylon dug out a flashlight from the kitchen cupboards and lit it, finding the fuse box in the corner of their living room. Propping the flashlight between his head and his shoulder, he opened it and found the master control for their power was turned off. He flipped the switch, and with a little shudder, the lights in the living room and in his bedroom turned on again, the heaters started humming. Waylon tossed the flashlight onto the couch and started to return to bed. The heat in his room was welcome; the clock radio was flashing 12:00.   
  
However, just as he started to sit down on the bed, all the lights flashed out again. Heart quickening, he flashed back to his own notes: _Whatever is keeping the electricity flowing is trying to trap me here. I need to shut it down again?_  He thought it was time to wake Lisa.   
  
Now, before he could do anything, the clock radio leap to life. At max volume, it played tunes that chilled Waylon to his core. _When I was a boy my mother often said to me…_    
  
Waylon was shaking, terrified he was about to leave his house again. He leaped over, kneeling by the bedside table, pressing the buttons on top. The time read 6:66. He was shaking his head, terrified he was about to descend into another flashback, another delusion, tearing the power cable out of the back of the radio.  
  
It remained on.   
  
“Lisa,” he grabbed his wife’s arm, kneeling on the bed with the demonic radio. “Lisa, Lisa please wake up, Leese…”   
  
“Wh…what?” she turned over, unable to see in the dark. “Way, what’s going on?”   
  
“T-the radio,” Waylon stuttered. “Can you hear it? See it?” he held the machine out to her.   
  
She looked at it blearily. “Sweetie, it’s unplugged. It’s turned off.”   
  
_I want a girl, just like the girl –_  
  
“N-no…” Waylon covered his ears with his hand. “Leese, I can hear it! What’s wrong with me?!”  
  
“Waylon, shh, you’ll wake the boys,” she placed the radio away and hugged his head to her chest, rubbing the back of his skull. “You’re hearing things, baby, it’s not real…”   
  
Waylon was panicking. “The power is turned off, Leese, please turn it on—”   
  
She got to her feet and took the radio. The music was just as loud in Waylon’s ears. After a second, there was another click, and the house came to life again.   
  
Waylon was losing his mind. It was time to get help. When the power was on, the music stopped just as suddenly as it started. When Lisa returned with the clock, the numbers were off again, and she plugged it in and it reset. She had to stay up for a long time stroking his back until his breathing slowed to something more like normal, and by that time, the sun was up in the sky. Lisa was so tired.  
  
Waylon’s state had deteriorated faster than Lisa had ever expected. He’d been surprisingly stable during their departure from the States, but maybe it was because it was all so fresh. Maybe it was with nothing to distract him that the true horrors set in. They needed help, they needed contact – she couldn’t do this on her own. Her research was in cancer, immune cells, natural killers. Waylon’s brain was something she could hardly fathom.  
  
Lisa decided to venture into town today to search out a good psychiatrist using the library computers. Both Ben and Theo were responsible for Waylon’s wellbeing, but the man planned to not need their help. He wanted to be alright for his boys; they were the only reason it was worth getting out. He set himself up with sense blockers – blindfolds, earplugs, the soft blanket he could wrap around himself to give his skin real sensation. Ben gave him his little digital camera – a cheap one they’d bought to take pictures of the countryside as they crossed from state to state – so he could take pictures to tell him what was real. Technology wouldn’t lie to him.  
  
For the morning, he was okay. He was tired, so it was very easy for him to lie on the couch in their living room watching the boys color in some movie-themed coloring book. Intermittently through the day, he took photos of the house around him. Everything seemed very sensible. He helped them through their school exercises, then Ben took a bath midafternoon. Waylon and Theo scrubbed down the kitchen together.

Theo was definitely the more sensitive of his two sons: he was quiet and pretended to be alright but was often very anxious. He didn’t have the strong spirit Ben possessed. The sun was still hidden behind clouds, but it didn’t look like it would rain today. The wind made the cabin shake. Waylon couldn’t help but notice just how tired Theo looked: clearly, he wasn’t sleeping well.

“Daddy, my back hurts,” he said out of the blue from where he was sitting on the floor. 

Waylon furrowed his brow. “W…what? How does it hurt, sweetie?”  
  
“It stings…” Theo reached back under his black sweater. “Ow…”

Waylon scooted over and placed a hand on Theo’s back. He was surprised to feel a warm wetness. Theo flinched at the contact. “Can I lift up your shirt?” Waylon asked hesitantly. Theo barely gave a nod.

Waylon eased the black wool over Theo’s head and began to breath quicker as blood smeared over his son’s pale back. Once the sweater was off, Waylon sat back and rubbed his hand through his hair, trying to comprehend what he was seeing.

Over Theo’s shoulderblades, there was a pattern. Perfectly symmetrical inkblots, stippled from a thousand tiny holes in his son’s skin. Like two wings with hidden images throughout, spilling blood down his back. The engine, one frame.

“What’s happening?” Theo asked, reaching back, finding blood on his own fingers.

“It’s not real…” Waylon whispered, reassuring his son. “H-hold on, it’s in my head, you’re okay…” With extremely shaky hands, he grabbed the camera and snapped a pic. The flash went off. He sat back and checked the image.

The wound on Theo’s back was real. What was worse was in the image, a shadowy foot was in the corner. Waylon was breathing so loud now, words escaping him, not wanting his son to panic. He squeezed his eyes shut.

“Daddy?” Theo asked again. “Am I okay?”  


“You’re fine, you’re not bleeding,” Waylon moved to a different pose and snapped another picture, from the side, and the blood was still there and now there was a dark circle, like a cigarette mark, on the digital image. “You’re alright…” Waylon was just lying to himself now. The vibrating was starting in his ears. He took another picture from the other side, and now there was a shadow hand curled over Theo’s shoulder.

Waylon just stared. He looked right at his son, looking for the distinctive black fog, the blurriness, the walrider. How was he getting it on film but not seeing it? How was technology fooling him more? He looked down at his own front as pain began, and red was already seeping through his white shirt.

He pulled it up to find the same stippled wound on his own soft stomach, blood pooling out of each tiny hole into a pattern too much like the engine. Over his whole chest, there was a deep purple bruise where the swarm had struck him the night before. Terrified, he took a picture of himself with the camera.

His entire body was covered with the darkness of the swarm.

As he looked at the photo, he could start to feel the swarm around him. He still couldn’t see it, but his skin was being nipped by a trillion tiny nanobots, dodging between his cells. He’d felt this in reality – immediately after waking in the asylum, he’d pushed past the walrider, being pressed upon by its molecules. All of a sudden in his mind’s eye, he couldn’t stop seeing the walrider macerate Jeremy Blaire. _CRUNCH._ Hips and spine beside him, blood next to him. He could feel his body being stretched from the outside – was he about to be torn apart?

All of a sudden, the windows around them went dark. It looked like the dead of night on a new moon – no light, no shadows, though the blinds were open. Theo screamed and Waylon reached out for him. “Theo—take my hand! Where are you, baby?” Theo just keeps screaming a crying as Waylon bumped his way around the living room, completely blind, arms out in front of him.

“Come towards my voice!” Waylon commanded, still walking forward, trying to find the wall. It should only take three paces to cross the room, but his hands had yet to contact the wall. “Theo?”

The eight-year-old was still screaming, but the sounds were impossible to locate. One second, it would be to his left, then to his right, then impossibly distant. The digital camera still dangled from his wrist and he had an epiphany, lifting it and snapping a picture in front of him, lighting up the room for just long enough for him to see Theo hovering in the top corner of their room.

However, the second the flash went off, light streamed in from outside again, the room returned to its true dimensions, and Theo fell five feet from where he’d been suspended in midair. He crumpled on the ground, still shirtless, back still dripping onto the ground. Waylon rushed to him, propping him up, holding him to his chest, trying to shield him. Dark shadows still darted around the windows, like something circling the house going 30mph. Everything was painfully silent except for a high pitched frequency, like a kettle boiling over. There was blood all over the floor, bloody footprints in circles, bloody handprints on the wall. Waylon didn’t know how to dress a wound that big.

“Can you see it?” he whispered completely breathlessly into Theo’s ear, both their eyes locked on the window where the shadow darted past.

“Yes,” Theo whispered back just as quietly. Waylon was terrified.

All of a sudden, the high pitched whine stopped and there was an enormous crash at their front door, the wood shaking, splintering. Waylon held Theo even tighter, placing a hand over his eyes, smearing blood into his fair hair. It withdrew and struck again, breaking the wood, the blade of an ax coming through. Waylon had seen enough; his survival instincts were strong. He picked up Theo and ran (hobbled) back towards the bathroom where Ben still resided, banging on the door. “Ben, put on a towel, we’re coming, we have to go—”

There was another strike and the wood split even more. The deadbolt held strong. The bathroom door opened and the older of the Park boys was there, already clothed, hair wet, trying to figure out what was going on. There was a final, pivotal, most powerful strike and the door swung open on its hinges, suddenly unlocked, revealing their own ax buried in the wood of their door.

“We have to get out of here—” Waylon pushed past Ben, grabbing his arm, locking the bathroom door and throwing open the window, elbowing through the screen and practically throwing Theo forward, then helping Ben through, then crawling through himself, then leading the three of them down the gravel path towards the main road.

Waylon honestly thought they were going to die.

They ran down the path, looking behind them, bare feet on gravel, already in a cold sweat in the November afternoon cool. Waylon had no intention of going back. They continued to run, pressure mounting, until they came around the bend nearly directly head on into Lisa in their sedan.

She had no idea what she was seeing, her husband and her two kids sprinting down the road, Ben soaked, Theo shirtless and Waylon sweating. She jammed on the breaks and the car shuddered to a stop. She threw the door open, stepping out, the wind whipping her hair. “What the hell is going on?” her voice shook.

“Something’s at the house, it got Theo, it got me and it’s gonna…” Waylon was panting, pushing past her, getting into the car. “We’re done, Lisa, we’re done…”

“Waylon!” She grabbed his arms, forcing him to stay out of the car. “Calm down! You’re seeing things! It’s okay, we’re okay! Stop panicking!”

“It broke down the door,” Waylon sobbed. “You can’t tell me that isn’t real.”

Lisa set her jaw and pushed him out of the way, getting back in the car. “Boys, get in the car.”

“No, Lisa, no, don’t go back—” Waylon cried, trying to pull the door open.

“Waylon, get in, there’s nothing there!” Lisa snapped. “Come on.”

Waylon just gave this terrible, dreadful, heaving sigh, then got into the passenger seat. Lisa finished driving up to the house, but Waylon refused to get out of the car, as did Theo. This made Lisa a little uneasy, but she picked up the jackknife from their wood pile and investigated.

The front door was locked with the deadbolt, so she had to climb in the window the boys had climbed out. The living room was in fine condition except for Waylon’s camera and the carpet crumpled in the corner. The door was shut and intact. There was no blood. She unlocked the door from the inside and opened it, relaxed but disappointed. It took some coaxing to get her family back in the living room. They fastened the door shut with a chair and sat in their living room. All three of her boys had cuts on their feet from the gravel, but they seemed alright otherwise. Waylon’s heart sunk when his wounds and Theo’s wounds were completely gone now.

Theo was wrapped in a blanket at Lisa’s feet as she stroked his hair, a fire crackling in the hearth beside them. “What happened?” she asked after a long silence.

“I dunno,” of course, Ben was quick to answer, because he hadn’t seen anything. “I saw the door open but, I dunno, it might’ve just been loose. I was just in the bath.”

“That’s okay, sweetie,” Lisa gave him a terse smile, “but I’m asking your brother and father. Waylon, what did you see?”

“I don’t know…” Waylon didn’t know what to believe anymore. He kept staring at where he’d seen the blood. “Theo said his back hurt. H-he was bleeding, and I was bleeding, then I couldn’t see anything and it looked like Theo was floating a-and then,” he sniffed, “something broke down the front door w-with our ax. So we ran.”

“Theo,” Lisa spoke very evenly. “What did you see?” He looked down and shook his head, so she hugged him tighter. “You’re not in trouble, sweetie, we just have to figure out what you saw and what daddy saw, okay?”

Theo looked at his wit’s end. “I… don’t know. It was cold. It hurt, it stung. I thought it was real…”

She hugged him tighter. “Sometimes, when other people get scared, we get scared, too. Here, you’re really cold, you should take a warm bath then I’ll cook supper, okay? I can read to you while you’re in the tub if you want.”

“I’ll be okay,” he said quietly, getting up to bathe and taking the blanket with him.

“Ben, can you finish your English homework in your room while your dad and I start dinner?” Lisa asked, getting up. Ben knew this was her way of telling him she didn’t want to see him for a bit.

Once the boys were gone, Lisa got up and went to the fridge. “I looked up therapists, psychiatrists,” she said softly. “The waiting lists are too long. You need help now.”

Waylon couldn’t look away from the fire, its dancing forms looking like the engine. His front still had a bruise; he knew that was real. His own brain was sabotaging him, but he knew already this was something more than just the trauma. He was starting to think about what Murkoff could do: electromagnetic fields amplified to their cabin, frying his brain all the time, stimulating false electrical activity?

“Sweetie?” Lisa looked back to where he still sat on the floor, gauze on his bloody feet. “Here, don’t get too close to that. Help me get dinner ready, can you grind up this ginger?”

Waylon felt really strange since he’d stopped crying – now, it was like he was half asleep, drowsy and drunk, his consciousness residing a little outside of his body. Was any of this real? He forced himself to get up, approaching the counter on sore feet. As Lisa handed him the vegetables, he frowned. “This ginger is really soft, how old is it?” It felt like mush in his hands already, and he wrinkled his nose.

Lisa looked slightly confused. “We bought it, like, two weeks ago. It looks fine to me.”

Waylon was not convinced, but he got out the mortar and pestle anyway and started to try to grind it. It really just mushed, soft like it was already rotten. “I think this is too old,” Waylon frowned. “Here, I can cut up veggies for you?”

But as he looked over Lisa’s shoulder to the potatoes and carrots, they were all moldy and soft and rotten as well, even as she cut them. The water boiling on the stove looked yellow, and the stew beef was filthy, white mould cultures and larvae squirming. He was suddenly extremely nauseous. “I… think I have to go lie down…” he backed off, _knowing_ that what he was seeing wasn’t real, but still incredible horrified. “W-will you be okay to finished dinner?”

She looked back, concern in her eyes. “Yeah. You okay?”

Waylon couldn’t even force a smile. “Uh, yeah.” His head was spinning, he felt like he was going to be sick. Shakily, he got to his room, one hand on the wall, sitting down and curling into the fetal position with his back to the window. He was sure it was just a branch tapping against the window, but it was getting too regular, too deliberate, so he turned over very slowly to look at the window. It was painfully slow, in fact, his gaze just barely brushing over his shoulder.

Poking at his window was the corpse from the forest.

“Stop–!” Waylon cried, rolling away again, pulling a pillow over his head. “Go away! You’re not real!”

There was a slithering sound and an ice-cold hand grabbed his shoulder, rolling him back onto his back where he was paralyzed suddenly. The body was now inside the room standing over him. “ **You know I’m real,** ” it said in a hoarse voice, sounding like it hadn’t spoken for years. Like woodsmoke, like paper. “ **But only to you. And I’m never leaving**.”  
  
“Lisa!” Waylon cried, trying to get up but the body held him down. He could feel the hand on his arm, the pressure was real, he was trying to move but he couldn’t. “Lisa, help!”  
  
“ **Why don’t you get your fucking camera and take a picture of me?”** the corpse taunted. His voice was inside Waylon’s head. “ **Show your family that they should be just as scared as you are.”**  
  
Waylon flailed for his digital camera on the nightstand, reaching, setting off the flash in the corpse’s face. The sample that remained on the screen only showed him the corner of his room. His heart sunk. It laughed in reverb and faded away, turning into grey smoke and seeping out between the cracks in the wall.  
  
“Way, honey, come out and eat dinner,” Lisa called fondly from the front room. With the corpse gone, he could move again, but he couldn’t ignore the sooty, bloody, four-fingered handprint on his yellow sweater. He ripped it off and crumpled it on the bed, unwilling to consider if it were real or just in his mind, putting on something dark and scratchy and heading in to see what Lisa had cooked.  
  
The boys were already sitting at the table with bowls of stew in front of them. Lisa was walking over with a bowl for him. “Here, how are you feeling?”  
  
Waylon needed to take one look at the food and his stomach turned. He _knew_ it wasn’t rotten, he knew he was imagining things, but the maggots and the mould floating in the broth made him sick to even think about. Lisa watched him visibly pale and step back. “... I don’t think I can eat tonight…” he said, carefully keeping his eyes away from the food. “I’m just gonna sit on the couch, okay?”  
  
Waylon couldn’t stand to be alone, but he had to sit with his back to his family while they ate their dinner. Even the smell was making him nauseous. He needed help. He was facing the window, seeing the corpse walk between the trees every now and then. The walrider and the dreams about Gluskin made sense, but he had no idea why he was seeing dead people. It wasn’t a patient, that was for sure – it had too much hair and its clothes were like that of a normal person. Was there some other repressed trauma that he couldn’t even access?  
  
His stomach was growling by the time his family was done cleaning up after dinner, but the thought of food still repulsed him. Even saltine crackers reminded him of the dust of bones, powderizing in his mouth. He went to bed without eating.


	4. third night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> waylon gets lost. waylon loses it. waylon talks to a ghost.

Lisa took a long time comforting Theo before he went to sleep – he was still shaken up from the morning’s episode, even though it wasn’t yet confirmed what he had truly seen. They all read two chapters and she left the night light on but their door solidly closed. Waylon didn’t want his horror affecting his family. He needed to be stronger.  
  
Eventually, Lisa coaxed him to bed. He liked sitting by the fire in the front room, but it burned lower until it was just ash, and Lisa helped him set up the grate before taking him to their room. The space heater made it warm, the blinds were already closed, the yellow sweater from before was stashed in the laundry basket. The lamp was on its dimmest setting as Lisa undressed him, tried to distract him, ran her hands through his short stubbly hair, kissed his neck. His mind was in a different place, still cautious, distracted, waiting for any sign that a monster was about to appear.  
  
Lisa was good at what she did. They became intimate, under the covers, her body still soft and supple and warm next to his. Waylon missed pleasuring his wife; he loved her so, so much. They were quiet, slow; they knew the boys were just next door. It was just like old times: Waylon felt like himself.  
  
They switched positions, moving off the bed. Lisa kneeled on the mattress, hips raised. One of Waylon’s hands trailed down her sloping back, admiring her womanhood, before slowly entering.  
  
But this beautiful illusion was suddenly shattered as Waylon’s manhood was not inside Lisa, but buried in a knot in their wood wall. Shock overtook him; he could feel the roughness of the wood, a million splinters on the most tender part of his body. His breath jammed in his throat, panic starting, terrified to move, already feeling phantom pain as if he did. He cried out, hand pressing on the wall in front of him, trying to break the illusion, trying to get back to Lisa, trying to find the light. The room was dark. “Lisa, LEESE!” he screamed, banging on the wall, trying to break through. “HELP ME!  
  
“Waylon!” Lisa’s hands suddenly wrapped around his neck and it felt like he was pulled through the wall. For a second, he was choking, then he surfaced with his back on the bed, the light casting over the room again. Her hands weren’t on his throat, they were on his shoulders, and he wasn’t stuck in the wall, he was lying on their soft bed. Strands of hair were falling out of Lisa’s low bun. “Sweetie, what’s happening?”  
  
Waylon’s whole body was shaking. “Leese, I need help, I’m _seeing_ things, I-I’m _feeling_ things, I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t wait for a psychiatrist, I need to get in the psych ward NOW!”  
  
“Baby, calm down,” Lisa sat on the bed next to him, hugging him and putting her face into the crook of his neck. “It’s okay, we’ll get through this, we’ll head down first thing tomorrow, okay? You’re okay, you’re here with me.”  
  
But Waylon knew that was a lie. First thing tomorrow was too far away; if this night went anything like the last one, or the one before, he wasn’t sure he’d make it. Even now, he was already drifting from reality again. He could sense something in their front room. He pushed Lisa out of the way, running out their door, standing in the living room where suddenly, all the lights flickered, their door was wide open, and the thick shadowy walrider human skull head beast was standing on their threshold, curtains and carpets flapping around him, pots shaking on the wall, kitchen sink spewing blood. It stuck out a hand to Waylon, an invitation. _Join me. Succumb to your insanity._  
  
Waylon was hyperventilating, paralyzed, Lisa appearing in the hallway behind him, dressed in her nightgown. “Waylon,” she spoke solidly. “Stop trying to make yourself panic. The front door just blew open, it’s okay.” And she walked right up to the beast, slamming the door, sealing the monster away, letting the room fall still. “Come to bed, put on your sleeping mask and ear plugs, we’ll go in the morning.”  
  
Waylon felt so wary, so weak. He licked his lips, not knowing how to express to Lisa that he needed this. “O-okay,” he said very quietly, unable to create any other words. She guided him back to bed, one hand on each shoulder, she tucked him in, the left the light on but the door locked, she kissed his head. She helped him place on the blindfold, holding his hands even after he couldn’t see. He knew she went to sleep, but he was still shaken. He told himself that nothing was real, that it was just in his mind so if he couldn’t see, he wouldn’t dream.  
  
It took him a very long time, but he did fall asleep. For a while, it was dreamless, but just as suddenly as he descended, he was awake again. His feet hurt; he was standing. They were still bandaged from the tearing gravel this morning, but he was definitely standing. And cold. Slowly, he took off his blindfold, and his heart stopped.  
  
He was standing in the middle of the woods, and it was dark.  
  
The sky was black: no moon, no stars, probably a thick overcast but likely the effect of whatever Waylon’s mind was infected with as well. He could barely make out the silhouettes of trees around him, and (of course) his cabin was nowhere to be found. Breathing very quickly, he looked around, trying to get his bearings. The quiet woods rustled around him, but he very quickly became aware that this was a problem. There was nowhere for him to hide; everything was unfamiliar. Was this in his mind? It felt real, but so had the wooden wall, and the darkness of the walrider this morning.  
  
He was shaking. He didn’t have a jacket; he was only wearing his bedclothes, no shoes, no blanket. Things rustled around him. There was a crack, but all he could see was black on black on black.  
  
“LISA!” he screamed, but no sound came out. It was like a whisper. “LISA! HELP!”  
  
The thrumming of the walrider was present, but he had no way of knowing where it was. He didn’t have his ankle brace on, so walking would be painful, but if he stayed out here, he would freeze. He was starting to wish this was a hallucination.  
  
(He told himself it was; there was no way he could’ve made it out this far for real.)  
  
So he pinched himself. He promised himself it was in his head; if he willed hard enough, he would return to his own bed, safe and warm. He thought it was a matter of will: since his brain was deteriorating, he couldn’t withstand the dreams. If he focused hard enough, he could overcome it.   
  
But the longer he stood, the more real it became. His feet hurt, went numb from the cold. He was shaking, holding his arms tight around his chest. “Leese?” he called out again, squeezing his eyes shut, hoping that when he’d open them, he’d be home.   
  
He was starting to grasp that maybe this was real; maybe he was far more fucked than he realized. Slowly, gently, he applied pressure onto his uncast foot, finding the tension in the muscle nearly unbearable. Could he have sleepwalked out here?   
  
He had to get back, or at least get somewhere warmer. It was impossible to tell any direction at all in the pitch black, so Waylon just picked one and started limping along, trying to ignore the pain from his feet. The wind chilled him and he shook more, the dead leaves made his feet go ache with cold. It was so dark, and with each step, his ankle hurt more.   
  
With a jolt, the walrider was suddenly in front of him, barely visible in the forest. Waylon jumped so badly he tumbled down, knees hitting the cold leaves and instantly becoming wet with frost. He was breathing so fast, the ambiance of the swarm screaming inside his brain. He thought he was going to die. Without his family to protect him, he was done. He stared at it as it stared at him, the engine dancing over his field of vision, and his mind turned to jelly, the forest suddenly warping around him so the trees were a hundred feet tall, so dense he couldn’t walk, filling in every space except for the walrider in front of him. He started to cry, curling up, so helpless as the swarm came towards him. All he could do was scream.   
  
Somewhere, miles away, Lisa jerked awake in bed, finding the spot next to her empty and shockingly cold. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for any trace of where Waylon was. His ankle brace remained on the top of their dresser. She checked the bathroom, the boys’ room, even under her bed. When she got to the front room, the main door was wide open.   
  
Her heart dropped.   
  
“Waylon?” she called out, leaning her head into the darkness of the night. There was no sign of him. “Honey, where are you?”   
  
It was about then his scream rang out through the woods. Lisa recognized it in a second. “Waylon!” she cried out, but she knew he couldn’t hear her. In a panic, she rushed back into the house, grabbing the flashlight, throwing on sweatpants and her coat and boots, securely locking the front door and running off in the direction of the scream.   
  
“Waylon, babe, I’m coming! Where are you?” she fanned the flashlight back and forth across the ground, looking for any sign of anything that didn’t belong in the forest. She wanted anything: a footprint, a scrap of fabric. He wasn’t replying.   
  
She slowed as her flashlight fell on something, darker than the leaves. She was shaking from the cold, but what she saw didn’t comfort her whatsoever.   
  
There were drops of blood on the leaves.   
  
“Waylon!?” she cried again, “where are you?” She could hear his quiet staccato breathing now, but he wasn’t responding. “Honey, I’m here, help me find you…”   
  
Her flashlight followed the drops of blood along the forest floor to an indentation in the ground. Between her and the hole, there was a thick tangle of roots, which she had to step around to look in. In the hole where the base of the tree had once been, there was the remainder of roots and her husband, curled up in a ball. Waylon’s face and bare arms were scratched and bloody from rough tree branches, one eye was weeping from a twig’s having lashed across it.  
  
“Honey, are you okay?” Lisa asked wordlessly. Waylon continued to stare straight ahead, shaking and trembling. The hole was at least four feet deep so she had to crouch down so she could reach to touch his arm. “Waylon, it’s me, it’s Lisa, come back to me…”  
  
Slowly, he looked up at her, eyes wide. “I’m lost—“ he said so hoarsely.   
  
“Sweetie, let’s get you home,” she said, trying her best to sound confident for him. “Can you stand?” Again, he didn’t reply. “Waylon, I need you to come back to me…”   
  
“How did I get here, Leese?” he asked, staring ahead again. He was shaking so bad. “I need to go to the hospital. Now.”   
  
Lisa couldn’t argue with that. His health was clearly at risk. “Okay, sweetie. We’re going home and we’ll get you your coat then we’ll get the boys and we’ll drive down together tonight. No one’s gonna be alone.”   
  
Lisa helped haul Waylon out of the hole and let him lean on her so they could hobble back to the cabin. Luckily, her sense of direction was very good, and the flashlight helped.   
  
Inside, she wiped down Waylon’s face with a warm face cloth, removing the blood and the tears. He wore three sweaters to try to get some heat back into his body, but it was to no avail: he continued to shake. Lisa rebandaged his feet and gave him socks, boots. His ankle brace was fastened on tightly. Once Waylon was in the front room warming, trying his best to stay focused for fear he would disappear again, Lisa went to wake the boys. They were tired but she helped get them into warmer pants and their coats and boots, then loaded them into the back seat of the car before she came back for Waylon.   
  
It hurt her to see him trembling in their bright living room, a blanket pulled over him. She went to him, hugged his head to her breasts. “You’re gonna be okay, baby. They can fix you right up.”   
  
He got his crutch out of the closet to help himself hobble to the car and tried to rest as Lisa drove down the path. The boys were asleep in the back. Lisa was exhausted. The high beams lit up the trees around them but Waylon didn’t want to look. He knew what he would see.   
  
He dozed a little on the ride, and before he knew it, they were pulling up to the Cypress Hills Hospital. Lisa was stopped by the door to emergency. “Do you need me to come in with you?” she asked gently.   
  
Waylon didn’t want to say yes, but he was scared to say no. “I… I think I do,” he said softly.   
  
So they had to wake the boys, Lisa carrying Theo in and Ben stumbling barely awake. Even Waylon was leaning on Lisa despite his crutch. When they reached the triage nurse, Waylon practically fell onto the counter. “I can’t stop seeing things and I think I’m having a psychological break,” he said outright. The nurse looked them over.   
  
“If you can admit him right away, I can work out all the paperwork,” Lisa volunteered.   
  
The nurse must’ve been able to see how distressed she was, so she gave them pity. After a quick runover of Waylon’s vitals (heart rate too high, blood pressure too low) she sent him off to the psychologist. Lisa tried her best to explain their situation; they had no ID, no insurance, no health cards. They’d find a way.   
  
Waylon was finally starting to feel like he had a little control once he was sitting in a hospital bed with a paper around his wrist. The doctor gave him a quick run through, but his delusions seemed pretty typical. They prescribed him some typical antipsychotics and set a nurse to check on him each hour of the night. For the first time in the last week, he was starting to feel better.   
  
After a little while, Lisa came up and he gave her the good news. She was exhausted but had to gets the boys home; they couldn’t afford to stay in a hotel. They hugged Waylon and promised to figure out what this meant for the future before heading home. Waylon felt ready to sleep.   
  
Whatever drugs they’d given him helped aid his tiredness and he was dozing off before he knew it. For the first time since September, he fell into a dreamless sleep. Things had been a confusing sine graph of improvement and regression since the beginning, with the last few days being a dangerous dip in his status. The slope seemed to be positive again as he started to feel rested for the first time. He honestly hadn’t expected fast results: the reason he’d been so hesitant to seek treatment was the belief that any effects would take months to show. They must have given him some pretty powerful sedatives to get him through the night.   
  
He did wake up, but he wasn’t afraid. The quiet beep of the heart monitor, the murmuring of people around, the knowledge there were nurses ready to rush to his aid if he started to descend into madness again were all here to comfort him. He lay back onto the tough hospital bed, feeling the rough sheets, but feeling alright.   
  
However, as he tried to get back to sleep, he started to notice something was off. The sounds around him were too regular, like on a loop. The same phrase, repeated over and over again. He tried his best to roll over, pretend it wasn’t happening. He told himself it was in his head; the drugs were to calm him. As he faced the window, he couldn’t help but notice as it started to fog up, frosting around the window. With a sudden jolt, a figure appeared, just a silhouette on the fog. A hand pressed against the window, clearing the condensation, leaving a wet fourfingered handprint, leaving dull watered down blood marks. Waylon’s breath quickened and he reached over his head, hitting at the nurse call button. The hand drew back and one finger traced out a shape in the fog: two dot eyes and a frown between. Condensation dripped down from the eyes like tears. “Nurse—!” Waylon started to call, sitting up in bed, trying to free himself from the heart monitor on his finger.   
  
Suddenly, the hand drew back as a middleaged nurse appeared in his door, looking tired. “Are you alright?”  
  
When Waylon tried to speak, he realized just how frightened he was. His breath shook as he got his words out: “I-I’m seeing things again. I-I’m seeing—“  
  
“It’s okay,” she was trying her best to be comforting, “Its been six hours since your first dose, I can give you some more chlorpromazine, which should help with the hallucinations, and I can give you some more Diazepam to mellow you out, if you want.”   
  
Waylon wanted to turn down the sedative, but his racing heart told him differently. He nodded his head and she adjusted the bag leading to his IV. The effect was visible almost right away as he started to calm, his anxiety fading away. He forgot to even check if the handprint was still there, and he settled back into his bed, thanking the nurse drowsily.   
  
In the morning, when he woke, he met first thing with the psychologist. He was frightened to reveal things about his past trauma; he didn’t want this to be the reason Murkoff found them. A quick check of his wrist tag revealed that Lisa had registered him as William — when they’d first gone on the lam, they’d decided on their code names. William Smith didn’t exist off of paper, but Waylon knew that was him. He made a careful note to call Lisa Lucy.   
  
He believed that the doctors wouldn’t turn him in, but if they knew about it, they were liable. He lied to them, telling them he’d been abused by a psychopath at work, sexually abused, and had seen the same psychopath maim another coworker. He was honest about his hallucinations: auditory, visual, and tactile. They agreed that the dopamine suppressors seemed to be working, so the psychiatrist should be able to write him a prescription relatively quickly so he could head home. It seemed likely that some antianxiety medication was inline as well.  After the consultation, he let Lisa know over the phone, and she was relieved beyond belief. He was happy that she was happy; there was no more need for the boys to wake up afraid, no more need for Lisa to have to walk him through hallucinations. She promised to drive down and bring him some of his things for his short hospital visit.   
  
Waylon was content by 8:30. He thought it all his problems were solved. The stress of Murkoff was something he could easily deal with if his mind was intact. He was going to be alright.  
  
He was fairly hungry and was feeling well enough to try to track down the little cafe that he knew must lie in the centre of the hospital. He was still wearing his pajama pants but now only wore one of the sweaters Lisa had bundled him in the night before. His feet were too sore for shoes from being cut by gravel, scratched by sticks and frostburned, so he hobbled down the hall in bare feet, his crutch under his arm to take the pressure off of his wounded ankle. The hospital had many noises, but they were all soft and clean. He was relatively calm. 

As he started to walk through the hospital, the endless hallways were becoming a little too familiar. He was starting to feel lost, feeling pursued. He knew he couldn’t expect two doses of antianxiety meds to completely mellow him out, so he tried to tell himself that his tension was natural. There were a billion things that could go wrong in the hospital; this was one of the first times he’d been in public in months. Murkoff was a very real threat.

The hallways were stretching around him like the forest, like his room had been. Was this vertigo? He blinked hard, leaning on his crutch, trying to remind himself what was real. He continued walking, glancing in rooms around him. All of the beds seemed to be completely blocked by curtains flapping lightly in the air conditioning. Waylon was becoming hyperaware of his own breathing, and the breathing, coughing, _wheezing_ coming from the beds. The engine was on his mind, but he wasn’t really seeing it. Not yet.

As he walked, he started to get more and more desperate to see another person. All of a sudden, there seemed to be no doctors or nurses around. The sole sounds in the hallways were his own staccato breaths and the _click click_ of his crutch. His paranoia only grew.  
  
He turned a corner to another hall that looked dreadfully long, his vision blurring around the corner like he was four drinks in at the bar. Now, in the centre of a hall, a doctor was standing facing away from him, silhouetted by bright fluorescent lights along the ceiling. He started limping towards him, eager to ask for some sort of proof that what he was seeing was alright or real, but before he could get close enough, all the lights flicked off. The hospital hall was cast into darkness, the sound of all electronics shutting off reminded him of the breaker switch in his cabin. “H-hello?” he called, his voice sounding muffled to his own ears. “What’s happening?”  
  
It was very dark, it was hard to make out where the doctor was, but Waylon continued in that direction. “H-help?” He stuttered, reaching out to the dark silhouette that still stood in front of him, just barely visible in the ambient light.  
  
Just before his hand could reach the sterile white coat, the lights flipped back on, and the doctor was gone. In his place, a thousand tiny cockroaches and flies dispersed along the hall. Waylon flinched terribly and felt sick, shaking his feet to try to get the bugs off of him. He was starting to realize this was definitely in his head. Limping even faster now, he crutched down the hallway, desperate to find someone that was real. Every room seemed empty, and his heart started racing faster and faster until he rounded another dizzy corner and found himself at a nurses' desk.  
  
He nearly fell onto the counter, sweating terribly. “I’m having visions, give me more medicine,” he cried desperately.  
  
The nurses couldn’t say much against that. One escorted him back to his room (things seemed more normal already: patients were visible in their rooms, people passed them in the halls) and emptied another bag into his IV. Waylon laid on his bed, trying to calm his racing heart. After twenty minutes, he insisted to the nurse that he would be alright on his own as long as he stayed in his room. Whatever drugs they were giving him were mellowing him out, but things seemed less blurry, giving him more focus on things he was really feeling. His hands were becoming a little shaky, but they warmed him tremors were a common side effect. He told himself that meant the drugs were working.  
  
He ordered a small hospital breakfast and ate in his bed, taking another dose of antihallucinogens before he felt well enough to try to get up again. He was much more determined in his second attempt.  
  
By the time he got into the hallway, he already knew he was wrong.  
  
It stretched in front of him, dark, only the light by his room and then a distant light at the end of the straight hall. He forced himself out, telling himself he just needed to get over it; it would be alright. He limped around, one step heavy and meaty, the other clicking along with the crutch. As he moved into the darker part of the hall, his eyes had to adjust, the glaring whiteyellow light at the end blowing everything else out of proportion.  
  
As he started to get closer to it, he started to notice the ground beneath his feet had changed – it wasn’t the tile of the hospital, but rough wood and torn up tiles. Like the asylum. Once he was into the light, he could see peeling paint on the walls, ancient wood rotting around him. Desperate to break himself out of this hallucination, he turned back, eyeing the light on next to his room. Like a fucking joke, it flicked off, his one hope extinguished.  
  
The second the light changed, he was transported to the asylum. There were screams around him just like in the actual time, he was slick with sweat, his own clothes replaced by the horrible patient jumpsuit. 2536. Waylon staggered along, touching the walls, the illusion solid on every front. He hauled doors open and revealed patients strapped down, bald and tumorous, just like those in Mount Massive. He knew he wasn’t in Saskatchewan any more, but he didn’t know how to get back.  
  
He told himself he needed more medication. More time for it to work, for his liver to take it up so his brain would be mellowed out. He felt woozy from the sedatives and nearly stumbled as tiredness overtook him, making his way down the hall. As he hauled a door open and the Walrider appeared in front of him, he only had the energy to fall to the floor. The engine flashed painfully true over his eyes, its nanotech stinging him like salt from the sea. He wept quietly as it hovered above him, powerful, godlike. He couldn’t even run. He was nothing.  
  
“Don’t kill me…” he whispered. “Please, I-I’ve done so much… come so far… don’t… kill me…”  
  
And all of a sudden, there was a horrible clicking noise, like someone laughing and clucking their tongue at the same time, overlayed with electric sparks. The asylum light above him flickered as the Walrider sailed past, over his shoulder. Waylon’s neck owled around, then his body followed, finding the corpse from the forest standing behind him in the hall.  
  
  
“ **Fucking childish, if you ask me,”** the corpse spoke, voice both electronic and in Waylon’s brain as well as analog and hitting his ears. “ **Why the fuck would you turn to drugs? Think they’ll help you escape?”**  
  
Waylon scooted back, legs feeling weak, ankle crying out at him, until his back hit a rough wall. “Why are you doing this to me? What are you? What’s happening to me?”  
  
The corpse gave a smile, dark sockets tightening at the corners. **“That’s a lot of questions, you might want to slow down.”** It stood almost nonchalantly in the halls, fitting in with the death and decay that existed in Waylon’s summation of Mount Massive. “ **Why am I doing this to you?”** Its expression darkened. “ **Because you fucking did it to me.”**  
  
Waylon’s heart was hammering. Was this thing actually having a conversation with him? Was this in his head, was this real? _He did this to him?_ “I-I don’t understand,” Waylon whimpered, voice so tiny.  
  
“ **I get it, it’s a lot to take in,”** the corpse's voice was light but serious. **“This is real, this is your life now, Park.”**  
  
“How do you know my name?” Waylon cried out.  
  
The body looked at him and he made eye contact with those two black eyes. **“Really, and you’ve forgotten mine? Unprofessional, Park, really.”** Waylon was still so far from understanding, so the body stooped to him, extending a mangled hand. “ **Miles Upshur, investigative journalist.”**  
  
It hit Waylon like a ton of bricks. The pieces fell together, the mutemail account, wanting help, what had doomed himself. He couldn’t bring himself to take that hand, the flesh blackened where it was starting to fester away at the finger nubs. Waylon started to hyperventilate, suddenly becoming so sad, so guilty. Pictures of the young journalist on his website flashed through his mind: tall, proud, tanned. Now he was reduced to nothing but a body, a ghost haunting Waylon’s psyche. He pressed a hand to his chest, bare beneath the jumpsuit. “I… I’m so fucking sorry… you, you went in that place, you saw it, you died…”  
  
 **“Died would have been nice,”** Upshur’s light manner was now gone. “ **What you lead me into was much worse.”** The lack of understanding must have been clear on Waylon’s face, so Upshur spread his arms, like our Lord on the cross, and the blackness of the Walrider rushed him, filling every pore, until its form merged with him. Two became one, and suddenly the skullheaded black beast from the forest stood before him.  
  
As Waylon sat on the floor, his mind was finally starting to catch up. What he had thought were three entities were really one: the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. All this was something his mind has conjured up, a manifestation of his guilt.  
  
Upshur could read his thoughts. “ **You’re still telling yourself this isn’t real,”** he scolded Waylon. “ **This is as real as it gets. I’m here, I’m here from revenge.”**  
  
“I’m sorry,” Waylon spoke so quietly. “I’m so sorry I sent that email. That I took your life from you. I’m sorry these things had to happen b-but I didn’t know… I was just trying to do what was right… I’m sorry—“  
  
“ **I’m going to take from you what you took from me,”** Upshur said simply. “ **It is only fair.”**  
  
 **“** Are you going to kill me?” Waylon trembled.  
  
“ **Too easy,”** Upshur was now smirking as he started to fade away.   
  
And as Upshur disappeared, Waylon was left in the vision. He was trembling horribly, knowing the technology he was looking at was too real. Maybe ghosts were makebelieve, but he’d been part of the team developing the walrider. There was no doubt in its power, and in the wrong hands, it had been detrimental. Now, with all of its CIA-mind-control-hypnosis power concentrated into Waylon’s tiny skull, he barely stood a chance.  
  
Worse too, now, his terror was coupled with horrible feelings of guilt. He’d never had the chance to consider if his email had even reached Upshur, let alone guided him into the asylum. He had another man’s blood on his hands, and that other man would haunt the life out of him.  
  
He could ponder the full impact of how he’d ruined Upshur’s life at a later date: in the meantime, he was trapped in the asylum inside his mind. He sat there on the ground, crying, hearing thunder and lightning outside, screams from afar. He couldn’t stop smelling blood. His mind filled with horrible twisted memories, things he would think of but see behind his vision. Lisa’s birth of their two sons, both times miraculous, but now twisted to something terrible. He could smell the blood then, too. There was so much blood, too much, really. He had worried. This same view he’d seen on Gluskin’s table, the act of birth crucified in a horrible parody. All he could do was cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! There should only be one or two chapters left!


	5. fourth day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lisa catches on. the family gets chased. waylon loses.

At the same time Lisa was on Waylon's mind, she was waking quietly in their cabin. It was the first time she’d gotten to sleep in that week, and the previous night’s antics were still heavily tiring her out. A glance at her clock told her she’d slept too late, but she didn’t want to worry about Waylon now. He’d called her earlier, when she’d been half awake, and he told her she was okay. It was time to get up.  
  
The boys were already in the living room, playing quietly on their gaming device. Half eaten bowls of cereal sat on the table. “I’m going to start laundry, can you guy check if you put everything in the hamper?” she asked quietly, starting a pot of tea to boil. The two nodded and hurried off.  
  
Lisa returned to her own room while slipping on a sweater over her chilly arms and missing Waylon, her furnace. On the top of their laundry basket was Waylon’s yellow sweater, which she loved so much. She let her hand brush over the soft fabric, lifting it to hold to her face. But before she did, she noticed dirt on it. It was more than dirt, though, it was a handprint of dried blood and soot. Four fingers. Her breath began to speed slightly, unease building. She set it on the bed for a better look, covering her mouth.  
  
The hand was much too big to be Waylon’s.  
  
Now, Lisa had already been a little tense. Between their front door unlocking and her husband disappearances, she was thinking something was worse with Waylon than just flashbacks. She’d told herself it was some kind of psychosis: he was doing things and forgetting them, personality splitting. She knew that trauma expressed different genes, but she didn’t know how that would change her husband’s brain.  
  
This wasn’t something Waylon could do. She was starting to think they were in real danger. Of course, Lisa didn’t think it was spirits. She thought Murkoff spies were around their cabin, sneaking in at night, looking at her things, finding the right time to strike. She wanted Waylon to be home so badly, but she told herself he would be soon, and he’d be all better. She left the sweater on the dresser and carried the rest of her dirty clothes to the washing machine. 

As she did laundry, her thoughts continued to mount. She was getting anxious, especially without Waylon around. The boys were being very quiet in the front room. She just couldn’t stop thinking about the attack that had sent Waylon and the boys running down the road just the day before. Theo had been terrified. With the laundry running, Lisa dressed for the day and stepped outside past the boys without a word. 

She tried not to be disturbed when she found their own ax buried in the top of their woodpile. 

Lisa was logical, sensible; she knew how to think things through. Before panicking, she tried to recall what had happened. Ben and Waylon had dropped it in the woods a few days ago. Had someone gone out to get it? Were there other people in these woods? Was it even theirs?  
She went over and picked up the ax, just to prove to herself that it was real. Slowly, she turned and looked to their front door, which Waylon had claimed to be axed down. Clearly, that wasn’t true, but something strange was up.

The possibility that someone really was fucking with them was becoming more and more likely. She hurried back in, shutting the door solidly behind her and again, not speaking to the boys. 

“Mom, when are we doing school stuff today?” Ben started to nonchalantly ask, but the expression on Lisa’s face was so serious he trailed off. Theo hadn’t noticed, and Ben tried to let on. 

Lisa sat on the bed, grabbing Waylon’s digital camera. She started to jet through the pictures he’d taken: mundane ones of the kitchen (nothing out of the ordinary) until she saw the pictures of Theo. Lisa saw the same hand, the same black marks around her boy, the swarm around Waylon. The last picture on the tape was Theo, suspended at their ceiling with an undeniable black entity holding him up by his throat.

All Lisa could do was stare at the picture. She’d never seen a ghost before. She didn’t believe, honestly, but she couldn’t deny the black skeletal figure holding her son three feet in the air. The horror in Theo’s eyes was so clear. 

When she finally lowered the camera, she didn’t know what to do. Was their cabin haunted? Waylon wasn’t crazy? Were they in danger?

“Boys,” she hurried into the front room, opening the closet and pulling out their suitcases. “Pack up your stuff. I think we have to move.”

This had already happened to them once, back in their Boulder home. The first time they’d had to leave everything had truly matured the boys, and now they hardly had to ask questions. Ben’s expression was unusually serious, and Theo was clearly anxious already: if their mom was this stressed, there was a good reason. Lisa hauled her own suitcase back into her room, hurriedly grabbing Waylon’s clothes, shoving them into the suitcase, her own clothes too, their jackets, his boot, the spare leg brace.  
  
She helped them load their bags into the car, tiny snowflakes starting to fall. All of a sudden, something rumbled up the path by their house and Lisa filled with dread. A taxi crept over the uneven gravel, turning into view. Obviously, Murkoff was her first worry, but whoever this was, they knew exactly where she was. She carefully placed herself between the boys and the taxi, trying her best to stand strong but faltering more than ever.  
  
Her dread was replaced with confusion when no thug stepped out of the cab, but her own husband. Waylon was looking dreadful and sickly, eyes purpled like bruises, hair a mess, leg wrapped in a rudimentary elastic bandage to give it the pressure he so badly needed. “Leese,” he sobbed, “we’re gonna die, it’s not okay…”  
  
“Waylon, baby, what’s happening?” she asked, rushing towards him, the boys suddenly following suit.  
  
“It’s not in my head, it’s real, and we’re not okay,” he cried, still shaking. “I-I’m losing my mind, baby, I don’t know what to do…”  
  
“We have to leave this place!” Lisa cried, trying not to let her voice rise as much as it did. “I packed everything. We’re leaving, then we’ll be okay, we’ll hide somewhere new–”  
  
“He’ll follow us,” Waylon said softly. “Wherever we go, he will follow… t-that’s why I came back. I know how to fix this!”  
  
Escaping his vision had been extremely difficult – somehow, Waylon had pulled himself halfway back to reality, enough to find his hospital room and flee the premises in a cab. Even now, an hour after it had begun, there were still wisps at the edges of his vision, times he’d glance to his side and see variants. He knew what had to be done, and it had to happen now.  
  
So he limped past them, back towards the cabin. He threw the front door open again, their house already looking rough with all of their belongings hurriedly packed away. Lisa hurried back in as the taxi withdrew, so unsure of what was happening. As the boys lingered behind, she grabbed Waylon, she stopped him at the threshold, turning him to look her in the eye. “Waylon, what is going on?” she asked breathlessly, voice down so as not to alert the boys. Her eyes were wide and fearful. “I’m scared.  I… I found things I can’t explain.”  
  
“I killed someone,” Waylon moaned, “and he’s back, he’s back for revenge! W-we have to stick together, I won’t let him hurt you… get the boys in here too, we need to stick together…”  
  
Lisa just stood, stunned, frightened, shaking despite her bulky winter coat. “Benjamin, Theodore, get in here,” she called, and once the boys were in the house she ensured the deadbolt was sealed behind them.  
  
Waylon was on his knees in the living room, throwing the rug aside, fingers clawing at the wooden planks below it. His family didn’t dare intercede. His hands started to bleed as he forced up the floorboards, ripping apart their home, his spine trembling as he finally made an opening. With another tug, the board came up, and he revealed a briefcase.  
  
“When did you…” Lisa trailed off, suddenly realizing there was a lot more to Waylon than she’d known.  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” Waylon pried the briefcase out, opening it with trembling bloody fingers. Inside sat a computer – his, untouched for months – a powerbar, and a massive external hard drive. He grabbed the power cord and plugged it in under the desk and connected the hard drive with a thick black cable. From their gamecube, he ripped out the HDMI cord and plugged it into his PC’s port. The engine flitted over his vision and the room became very cold. “Leese–”  
  
“I felt it too,” she said softly, pulling the boys closer, one under each arm.  
  
As Waylon moved to turn on the power on his computer, suddenly, all the blinds in their cabin were pulled shut, casting them into a darkness deeper than it should have been considering the time of day. Ben let out a cry of horror but Theo was silent, burying his face in Lisa’s arm. “The light, Lisa, _the light_ ,” Waylon moaned, sounding like a variant to his own ears, fumbling in darkness for a second.  
  
Before Lisa could make any sort of move, their kitchen lamp switched on, but instead of the soft yellow color it should have, it was dark red, casting the room into a nightlight glow. Illuminated in this new light between Waylon and his family, hovering a few inches off the ground in the cross position, was Miles Upshur. He hit the ground and Waylon turned, one hand on his computer, the other curled in a horrified fist.  
  
“Stay the f-fuck away from my family…” Waylon tried to speak evenly but stammered nonetheless.  
  
Upshur laughed, that horrible, electronic sound that was more machine than human. **“You took everything from me,”** his voice reverberated around their cabin. **“What do you have to stop me from doing the same to you?”**  
  
Waylon was trying so hard to be brave. “I know… what I did to you was wrong, but I’m going to fix it…” As his computer powered up, he entered a folder and pulled up a file, projecting it onto the screen. _Morphogenic Engine Activation Sequence 4._ It hurt his brain to look at as it flashed across their TV. “I want you to transfer the Walrider to me. I can deal with it, then you can go back to your own life, and–”  
  
Upshur stepped closer, terrifying Waylon into silence. “ **I died there, Park. There’s no going back to my life for me. And even if I could,”** he gave a dark laugh, **“Do you think I would give up these powers? You’re stupider than you look.”** His black gaze shifted past Waylon and he clucked his tongue. All four Parks’ eyes followed his gaze to their kitchen where the black mass of the walrider crouched intensely on the top of their fridge. It sailed through the air, wrapping Miles in its mist before hovering behind him. It looked more defined than before.  
  
“Lisa, run!” Waylon screeched, trying suddenly to dart across the room towards the door where his family stood.  
  
Miles shook his head and suddenly, before his eyes, Waylon’s family was transformed to three faceless beings: not even the structure of a human face, just a skin covered chasm on the front of their heads: no nose, no jaw, no cheekbones. Like ice cream scoops. Waylon sobbed and dropped to his knees. The engine still cast colorful shapes onto the red walls around them.  
  
 **“They’re fine,”** Miles strutted in front of Waylon, grabbing his jaw with one hand almost playfully, the sheer energy associated with his being burning Waylon’s skin like radiation. **“I think you and me need a little time for a one-on-one chat.”**  
  
Waylon was crying, terrified to move. “C-can they see you?” he asked.  
  
 **“Not right now, but yes,** ” Miles answered. “ **They can’t see the swarm. Only people who have been in the engine can. And would you shut that shit off**?” He looked annoyedly towards the TV. Waylon didn’t have to move as the screen shattered on his pure will.  
  
Waylon straightened up, trying to show some dignity even on his knees. “Are you going to kill me?”  
  
“ **I haven’t decided,** ” Miles said nonchalantly. “ **Regardless, I want a chase. See how it feels bein’ on the other side, y’know? You’ve got time. Kiss your wife, hug your kids. I’ll see you again later.”**  
  
“Hey—” Waylon boldly reached for him, one hand contacting the filthy jacket, getting a fair amount of pushback from the swarm. “Please, just d-don’t hurt my family. Do whatever the fuck you want to me, but please, please have mercy.”   
  
The look Miles gave him was strangely indifferent. “ **You would’ve had more luck convincing me while I still had my humanity**.” With that, suddenly, the red light flipped back to white and their cabin was cast in a normal glow. Lisa and the boys had their faces back, panting for breath, rushing towards Waylon, embracing him, safety in numbers.   
  
“You have to leave this place,” Waylon was quivering, adrenaline still coursing through his body. “He’ll be back soon. I don’t want you here, he only wants me.”   
  
“I’m not leaving you,” Lisa hugged Waylon, holding his head in both hands. “I can’t go…”  
  
“Lisa,” Waylon said sternly. “You have to go, you’re not safe—”   
  
“I can’t let you die,” she cried, tears leaking out of her eyes. The boys could hardly comprehend what was going on. “We’re stronger together, Waylon. I won’t leave you.”   
  
He swallowed, shaking terribly, slipping out of their grip and onto the ground. The swarm ambience in his head was still so loud, his vision woozy like he was drunk. He let out a terrible wail, breaking down, too depressed to stand. His family gathered around him, rubbing his back, trying to comfort him. “Don’t cry, dad,” Ben tried to comfort him.   
  
Waylon was the one who had brought this back. Stupid, fucking fool, bringing this sickness into his home. He was crushed because he’d brought his family into this – if he’d just died in the asylum like he was supposed to, they wouldn’t be living in fear in a cabin in the forest in Saskatchewan. Why did everyone have to die but him?  
  
Horribly, he dragged himself along the floor to the kitchen table where his digital camera sat. He snapped a picture of the room and cried only harder at the image left on the screen. He got to his feet and turned the camera to Lisa.   
  
Their entire living room was occupied with horribly black walrider-esque figures. They had their hands on Theo and Ben’s shoulders.   
  
“Get. Out of here. Now.” Waylon ordered one more time. “Please.”   
  
Lisa was crying silently, pulling the boys closer to her. Her heart was breaking. How was she supposed to choose between her husband or her children? She loved Waylon with everything she had – honestly, it hurt her to think of a future without him at her side. She wanted them to watch their kids grow up, she wanted grandkids. She wanted to be buried next to him in their family plot, but they had so much more time. She didn’t want to give up.   
  
Luckily, that choice wasn’t made for her. The ambience changed almost instantaneously in their house and Waylon’s gaze darted to the left, where in their tiny hallway. the silhouette of the walrider hovered. It turned its head to look at him, and all the lights went out.   
  
It was time.   
  
“RUN!” Waylon screamed, fumbling forwards in the dark towards where he knew the door would be. In the pitch black, his hand found Lisa’s, and his other found Theo’s tiny hand. Their furnace creaked to life, but the metal was buckling more than it should. The squeak of their gas stove turned as well. Forcefully, Waylon knocked down the front door with his good shoulder and tumbled out into the fresh air with his family. Somehow, it was dark outside – hours had passed while Upshur had taken them to the red dimension. The bare ambient light finally illuminated his family, brighter outdoors than inside with the artificial darkness of the walrider. It took a second for him to get his feet under him, then he was ready to run. Theo’s hand was still in his, and Lisa had Ben, all of them too afraid to let go as they looked over their shoulders, leaving their cabin, waiting to be pursued.  
  
Their stove continued to pump out gas, and through the open front door, they could see the bloody white smile of Miles Upshur as he lifted a cigarette to his lips and flicked on a lighter.   
  
Of course, the cabin ignited. Everything they knew was up in flames, a near explosion, heat emanating out and casting bright orange light onto all of their faces. The hot air rushing at them hurt their eyes as they tumbled away, lit from the back, the flames dancing like strobe lights around them. As they rounded the house, their sedan went up in flames before their eyes. In a line, they already knew they had to flee by foot.  
  
They started to run, panting loudly in the silent forest. It was pitch black as they ran down the gravel path, the way towards humanity, back to salvation. Already, Waylon’s foot was slowing him down, the limp inevitable. The ringing of the walrider was around him already, he knew he was holding them back.  
  
“Boys…” he passed Theo’s hand to Lisa, “RUN!”  
  
And without him, they were off like a dart. Ben was in track and field, he was a good sprinter. They had shoes and coats now: they were fine except for the darkness. Waylon was going as fast as he could, although already falling behind like a sick animal. Survival of the fittest – his wife and the boys would live and prosper, and he would finally be wiped out.  
  
But not if he could help it.  
  
He tried his best to stay in earshot of his family, the three pairs of footsteps crunching on the rocks below them. It was much easier running on the road than in the dense forest, so it was wise they had picked this way. Waylon honestly had the audacity to think that he was managing pretty well with his damaged foot when something grabbed a hold of him from behind and  
  
 _pulled_  
  
him back, horizontal, vertical, until his face was in the dirt and the engine was flashing over his eyes. He tried to claw his way back into the ground but he continued being pulled back along the filth, fingernails scraping more and bleeding, crying out as the sounds of the family got farther and farther away. He cried as he was pulled closer and closer to their burning cabin, back to hell once more.  
  
The unseeing force brought him back until a shoe pressed down on his back. Waylon was crying, still trying to pull himself forward as pressure was pushed down into the ground. He felt like a worm, the brightness of the fire stinging his eyes.  
  
Upshur flipped him over, as hideous and deformed as ever, smelling of rot and dripping black blood. **“How does it feel?”** he hissed, more machine than human. Waylon didn’t have to say anything; the swarm just soaked in his complete despair, the horror he’d all seen. Tears rolled down Waylon’s cheeks and he looked up, past Upshur, past the flames engulfing their life, to where black trees tangled on a blacker sky, to where heaven should be. Miles smirked, grinding his heel farther into his chest. **“You’ve given up. Why? Why not then, but now?”**  
  
Waylon sniffed horribly, eyes drawn to the chasm that was Upshur’s face. “I-I just want my f-family to be safe,” he sobbed, tears streaming down his filthy cheeks. “P-please, just get it over with…”  
  
Miles shook his head. **“Park, I’m not gonna make this easy. I’m not giving you what you want. You’re not going to like this.”** Waylon’s body then burned, burned as if he was the cabin beside him, skin curling, rotting as Miles pushed his own force into him, the swarm burrowing in the holes between his cells, in the mesh of extracellular cytoskeleton, through every pore and molecular space until the swarm was more inside Waylon than Waylon was in himself.  
  
Waylon cried out, so badly wanting to die, wanting to distract Miles so his family could get down the hill and away from this nightmare. His bones vibrated at a frequency he couldn’t hear, the movement making his skin itch and twist. He sat up chest first, head lagging back like vertigo, chest heaving in staccato breaths that were not his own. Suddenly, Waylon was trapped only in his mind, not his brain, like watching a movie play out as his body wrenched itself up off the ground. All he could hear were the screams of the swarm, and all he could see was the engine projected onto the blurry progression of images that his eyes were picking up. He was possessed, body not his own, moved unreadily forward with the power of the swarm inside his muscles.  
  
He felt deaf, out of control, cornered, screaming at himself to die, _why couldn’t he have just died,_ as the walrider picked him up like a flesh puppet, fetched the ax from beside the burning cabin, and set off down the path again. There was no limp anymore; he couldn’t feel the pain of his ankle, but he could feel the internal bleeding from torn ligaments already. He was losing touch with reality.  
  
With the cloud in control, he was slowly losing each sense, one by one. Each part of his brain was becoming overwritten by the walrider, losing the parts of him that made him him and melting away everything he knew. Hearing was already gone, and pain, and movement, but the somatosensory system was still online - he could still feel. Hot and cold were one in the same, TRP channels degraded, but pressure was present. Could he reach memories, emotions, fear, morals? Is this how he lost his humanity?  
  
Each step, he got farther and farther from Waylon Park and closer to whatever the fuck Miles was. In the hospital, Waylon had felt guilty; he’d understood that he’d hurt this man, maybe even considered that what Miles was doing was right. Having his mind melded with the swarm was proving to him that it took away all the humanity there had ever been: there was no way sharing this hive mind would let any of the real Miles Upshur through. All it knew was violence, fear, adrenaline; the soft empathy that made people different from animals was nonexistent.  
  
Already, Waylon was feeling different. All he could feel was fear, no warmth thinking of Lisa, no refuge in her tan memory. He was terrified at his own determination, tracking through the woods silently like a hunter, ax squeezed in his hand so his knuckles were whitened. There was no right or wrong, just an animal instinct for survival; at all costs, complete the task.   
  
Meanwhile, on the way down in the woods, Lisa was just realizing her husband’s uneven footsteps were no longer behind them. It was pitch black now, too far from the cabin to see any of its burning glow. They came to a sudden stop, the boys on either side of her. “WAYLON!” she screamed, looking for any source of motion around the trees.  
  
“Mom, we have to go,” Ben panted, “it’s what dad wanted. H-he’ll be okay, but we have to go.”  
  
Lisa couldn’t believe she was hearing this from her own son, but Ben was right. It didn’t make sense to sacrifice all four of them for the safety of one. Still, Lisa’s heart would not let her leave her husband behind. “Ben, you’re right, but I’m going back. Take Theo, keep going down the road until you get to the highway then run to the left until you see a car, okay? Get them to drop you at the Dunkin Donuts by the junction with the I95, I’ll meet you there when I get dad, okay?”  
  
Ben was not ready for this, tears running down his face. Lisa rubbed his cheek. “Okay, sweetie?” she repeated more intensely, forcing her kindest smile.  
  
“Okay,” Ben blinked away the tears and whispered, taking Theo’s hand and the two were off into the darkness again.  
  
Lisa continued to crouch just barely in the underbrush, eyes scanning the forest ahead of her for any sign of life. “WAYLON?” she cried again, then went silent, waiting for reply: a sign, a sound, anything.  
  
Metres off in the forest, Waylon was walking possessed towards her. He couldn’t hear her, per se, but when his body heard her, he could sense it. There was a now unfamiliar skip in his heartbeat, a slight calming in his amygdala, telling him he was okay. Connections had been cut to the prefrontal cortex, so he couldn’t really put together what this meant. Imagination and problem solving were gone, so right now he was only really sensing things and trembling in a corner of his mind. How he remained conscious, he didn’t know.  
  
Next to go was feeling altogether. It felt like he was floating in a bath although he knew, in reality, he was destroying his damaged leg. Although his vision shook with each step, he might as well have been floating. He wasn’t afraid to feel pain anymore.  
  
His long-term memories were gone. In his fear, he tried to back away, to think of better times, in Boulder, the boys playing in the yard, his old job, the wedding, but they were locked away and inaccessible. Every time he went back, he got stuck at the asylum and was stuck face to face with the cannibal or the groom.  
  
However, his mental decline was sidetracked when he recognized something in the centre of his field of vision, something he’d seen numerous times more recently than September. Crouched behind a bush was his lovely wife, hair back in a tight bun, face white in the darkness.  
  
“Waylon?” she was saying quieter now, but he couldn’t hear her. “How did you get here? Why do you have the ax, did you kill him?”  
  
But the walrider didn’t comprehend speech enough to make Waylon say anything back. Miles had sent it in with one mission, and one mission only. It had never failed him at anything, and tonight would be no exception.  
  
Of course, the very un-Waylon expression on his face gave Lisa and early hint that something was off with her husband. As he approached in silence, she took a step back, eyeing the blade in his hand. “Waylon…”  
  
And incredibly suddenly, Waylon lunged at her. As he swung the ax, she shrieked. In his mind, Waylon was crying out too, beginning for himself to stop, rocking back and forth in his head, aching to get back any sort of control. All he could feel was terrible dread as the one good thing in his life cowered before him. The swarm filled him with an inhuman strength as he swung at her, charging, hitting her bluntly and casting her down before pinning her with the handle and looking her in her eyes. Waylon could see Lisa struggling so clearly from his viewing space, the engine covering her face like a mask as she tried to push him off.  
  
 _No, no, stop, kill me, kill yourself, anything but Lisa, Lisa needs to live, I can’t hurt Lisa,_ he tried his best to redirect the beast, but Miles was the host so Miles had God's word.  
  
As she gave a powerful push, he drew back onto his feet, leaving her on the ground, horror in her eyes, and with an unwavering blow, he unexpectedly brought the ax down on Lisa’s foot. She shrieked, and Waylon could suddenly hear it. His brain was literally splitting, his cells squeezing, his blood pressure rocketing, heart clenching, lungs expelling all oxygen, veins bursting, alveoli rupturing, hernias forming, he couldn’t let himself hurt Lisa. But the swarm jerked his arms up and down and he contacted her again, easily slicing flesh, chipping bone, then up and down again and her leg was _severed,_ on god, he maimed her, and Waylon was out like a light.  
  
It was a click; his mind literally shut off. Even the recent memories were removed, emotions were gone. The guilt he should have felt was away: all he could fear was endless horror, and all he could see now was the engine, blind, completely locked in a box away in the corner of his brain, insane, hearing the swarm, a monster in body and in mind, defeated by Miles Upshur.  
  
Back in reality, Lisa was screaming. She’d never gone through anything so painful and was losing blood at a dangerous rate, already knowing she was going to go into shock. As Waylon fell unconscious before her she watched the swarm recede from his body, knowing this possession was over, knowing that Miles had finally been vanquished from her husband’s spirit. She grit her jaw and ripped off the sleeve of her coat, adrenaline coursing through her veins. She cried out at the effort, then wrapped the fabric around her calf as tight as it would go, anything to staunch the bleeding, then forced herself to sit.  
  
Horribly shaking and covered in blood, she knew what she had to do. Getting up on her on remaining foot, she lifted her own limb (no longer attached) grimacing, crying, and tucked it under her arm. She knelt, trying to pull Waylon up, now back to his meek 140 pounds. If she had to crawl out of that forest, she would, and that’s what she had to do. On her knees, she slid along the shoulder of the road, dragging Waylon beside her, completely oblivious how far to the road.  
  
Already getting lightheaded, she set her jaw and decided she would not die tonight. Lisa had the will to live through anything. And (of course) if Lisa willed it, it would be. Her heart nearly stopped with relief when headlights started to shine over the gravel road before her and a car appeared before them, her own son’s two fearful faces in the passenger seat and a kind stranger looking horrified onto the scene.  
  
He helped her get Waylon into the backseat, and then she climbed in and passed out, too. Ben couldn’t stop looking at his mother’s severed foot. Theo’s whole body shook with unease. The stranger turned on the tight road and sped down to the closest emergency room, leaving Upshur and the burning cabin and the haunted forest behind.


	6. epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the aftermath.

At the hospital, all four Parks were committed. Both boys were so overtaken with shock that they had to be closely monitored for any sudden medical emergency. Lisa immediately went into surgery and received a 48-hour blood transfusion. They couldn’t reattach her foot: the ax’s damage had been too random, too harmful, but it would be easy to make a prosthetic for.  
  
Waylon was a mystery. He was filthy, covered in blood from his eyes and nose, blood that wasn’t his own all over his clothes. His foot was damaged worse than in the initial asylum: without pain to tell him he was causing damage, nearly the entire muscle had torn again. A cast was applied, but otherwise, he was physically healthy. He seemed to be in some sort of coma: alive, but unconscious to the world.  
  
He remained in this coma for a significant time: after the boys were better, after Lisa was well enough to visit him, after her parents were there to help her grieve. They didn’t know if he would ever wake up.  
  
Lisa was sitting in his hospital room, watching him breathe, waiting for Theo to finish up with the mental health counselor and trying to get used to the new stump at the end of her left leg.  
  
“… Lisa?” a very quiet voice from the bed hoarsely found its way over to her. She wheeled her chair over to his bedside, trying to figure out if she’d imagined it. Waylon’s eyes were still closed, his heart monitor still pumping on slowly, steadily. She didn’t want to let herself get excited, nervously placing her hand on top of his.  
  
“I’m here, Way,” she said very softly. “Come back to me.”  
  
His eyelids fluttered and he squinted at her through the bright hospital light. “Leese…”  
  
She forced herself up, leaning over to hug him, tears threatening in her eyes. “Oh, baby, I was so afraid…” she cried. “You’re back, you’re okay…”  
  
The nurses rushed in, removing Waylon’s feeding tube, adjusting the monitors, helping him rouse. The only face he could look at in the room was Lisa’s, flushed and teary and round, drawing him in. “I… hurt you…” he said very softly, but the nurses didn’t need to hear. It was just for Lisa. “I’m so sorry… there’s a… monster inside me…”  
  
Waylon was in and out a couple times before he finally fully woke. Lisa, Ben, and Theo remained in his room as he fell seemingly in and out of sleep, until he finally sat up, returning to earth. The boys were thrilled; for a brief instance, when they saw their parents on the side of the road, they’d considered that they might not have parents anymore. But Waylon was rousing before them, blinking eyes open, reaching for them, and the four crawled into a big tangle in his bed, hugging him and never letting go.  
  
“He took me…” Waylon cried to them, “the swarm, it possessed me… Lisa, I would never–”  
  
“I know, I know, I’ll be okay,” Lisa smiled, her bandaged stump hurting her much less than the loss of her husband. “I love you, Waylon, I’m so happy you’re okay…”  
  
“I fought him back,” Waylon cried into Lisa’s hair. “Seeing you hurt gave me the strength to overpower him… you saved me, Leese…”  
  
And as much at it seemed like a _deus ex machina,_ too good to be true, Lisa was desperate for some good news in her life. She believed him, she wouldn’t question it again. In her eyes, Upshur was gone, and they could move on. They didn’t have to be afraid anymore: if they could survive the swarm, they could survive anything…

* * *

  
Six months later, the Parks were moving on. Spring had arrived, they were now far from that cabin, living in a real house somewhere suburban in Cypress Hills, in Saskatchewan. It was evening; Lisa was doing laundry while Waylon put the boys to bed. Finally, after years of dreaming, they had a third-floor laundry room. It was little successes like this that kept her going. She nudged the laundry basket over with her prosthetic foot, bending finally to lift it an carry it to her room to be folded. It was dark and quiet in their new home: just peaceful sounds around like a dog barking a couple houses over, cicadas whirring outside in the May air, small leaves on the tree rustling in the wind. Their neighbourhood was dark, sure, but not nearly as dark as the forest. They’ve been telling themselves they’re moving on.  
  
A few doors down is Theo’s room, where Waylon sat on the edge of the bed, his right leg tightly wrapped in a physiotherapy brace. He stroked his youngest son’s short blond hair. “Look, I know the nightmares have been bad, but you’re okay. They’re not real. Mom and I, we’re just in the other room if you need us. We’re seeing the therapist next week, remember?” Theo made no movement to acknowledge his father’s statement, continuing to stare straight ahead, trembling just a little bit. Waylon moved in, hugging him and kissing the side of his head. “Sleep well, okay?”  
  
Theo finally met his gaze and whispered back, “okay.”  
  
“That’s my boy,” Waylon squeezed his shoulder. In Waylon’s brain, he could see Theo, but in his mind, he could not see. The sound in his room never reached his mind; all he could hear was the ambience of the swarm, the rest of the world’s audio booming as if he were underwater. The engine danced over Theo’s face in layers, and all Waylon could do was scream. His voice was just another layer to the ambience now. Waylon’s mind remained, but the part of him open to the world was not the real him anymore. The real him only remained crouched in a corner of his mind, visualized as himself in a patient jumpsuit, only an observer to a life that is no longer his. The larger, the stronger and more entire part to him now was the walrider. The man his family once knew was gone; what remained was a shadow of how he used to be, perpetuated by however much of the swarm Miles had spared to keep him constantly on the brink of insanity.

  
But of course, Theo couldn't see this. _No one can know._  He could only see his father with a slightly malevolent expression, a look too strange for Waylon, leaving him. Waylon turned off the lamp in Theo’s room so only the stark lighting from the hallway is cast in. “Sweet dreams,” Waylon whispered, shutting the door. Behind it, the walrider hovered, and Theo screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you made it all the way through, thank you so much for reading. Happy Halloween :)


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